Dain's mouth met mine, not with fur and fangs, but with the warm press of lips as the winter around us vanished and everything impaling him clattered to the floor. His lips touched mine, and then his arms were around me with his chest pressed hard against me. I buried my fingers in his hair and grabbed him by the waist and kissed him with everything I had, and he answered me. Everything fell away, nothing mattering but him, the heat of his body and the taste of his mouth and the feel of his hands as he clung to me, a hand in my hair and an arm around my shoulders and a wing-hand grabbing me by the back of the thigh as I tried to climb him like a tree.

Then he yelped and dropped me, dancing backwards. "Fuck!" Dain gave me an appalled look. "You are fucking covered in iron, woman!"

I stared at him for a moment, then started laughing helplessly. My laughter did nothing to appease the look of consternation on my soulmate's face, which only made me laugh harder. I dropped down onto a piece of rubble and put my face in my hands, unable to stop, all the stress and horror and grimness of the past days breaking in the face of it being done, of winning.

After a moment, I heard movement, and then Dain's hands wrapped cautiously around my wrists. He tugged at my arms, and I let him, lifting my head up and looking at him with a disbelieving smile, laughter still bubbling in my chest.

He looked up at me from his position crouched in front of me, something like exhausted amusement written on his beautiful face. Dain was smeared with blood and soot, had a deep cut splitting his left upper lip, and a whole series of slices across his body. Thick trails of blood streamed from what had been arrow and sword wounds along his flanks and belly, and now were relatively minor injuries, all things told. He also looked like he'd been dragged to hell and clawed his way back, his face with that slackness you only get after being up for way too long, and his muscles lax where they weren't necessary for maintaining his position.

"You look like shit," I informed him.

"I feel like shit," he said with a smile. "Did you know that it really, really hurts to step on a bunch of vertical-pointed iron nails?"

"That was the idea," I said. "Did you like the napalm?"

His smile spread into a grin. "Do you mean the inferno that is likely still blazing on the hill you so craftily hid? Very much so."