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The Fjerdan man who’d tried to kill me. The ache of my sore muscles after so many days’ hard riding along the southern trails. The Little Palace looming like a fairytale as we arrived, the Grand Palace even larger — and the chatter of the other Grisha, so confident as they stood before Ravka’s king and queen.
All of those should’ve been the things swirling through my head as the last of my tears over Mal finally fell, leaving me raspy-throated and exhausted, my nose thick with stuffiness. But instead I found myself longing for the warmth of Darkling’s palm against the nape of my neck, flooding me with that certainty, that rightness .
How could a single touch make me feel that way?
I’d always thought I adored Mal, but he’d never woken that in me. The sense that everything was finally where it belonged; a final piece falling into place, a puzzle finding its completion.
That with the Darkling, I was home.
It couldn’t simply be that the steely-eyed man was an Alpha; I’d been around plenty in my regiment, and all they’d evoked in me was a vague disgust at their overpowering musk, potent enough that even the Betas complained.
Much as I hated to admit it, the Darkling smelled different. Like the razor-edge of a winter night, shadowed and lonely.
His scent called to me. He called to me every time his skin met mine.
How long would I be able to resist?
How long would I want to?
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The crisp rapping at the door startled me out of confused, hungry dreams — and a bolt of horror went through me as the fabric of the cotton nightdress clung to my inner thighs.
I was soaked .
I gasped, reeling without moving, as the reality of it sank it.
Being turned on was one thing. This was absurd , as though I’d spilled a pitcher of clear syrup in my lap while dead asleep.
The knocking at the door sounded again, and I heard the shaky voice calling out, “Just a minute” before I realized the words were mine.
The drenched nightdress screamed its accusations as I scrambled out of the bed and found a replacement nightgown, scrubbing my sticky thighs with the soiled one before tossing it away behind the star-bedecked screen.
Not that it was bound to help; as I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror over the basin, the hollow on one side of my neck was blotched an unmistakable pink.
Omega .
If the cascade of slick between my thighs or the scent of need that clung to my itchy skin wasn’t confirmation enough, the raised, oval outline of my mating gland — something I hadn’t known I possessed until that day in the Shadow Fold — certainly was.
The signs had been easy enough to ignore on the ride from Kribirsk. Here in the Little Palace, with someone banging down the door, it was inescapable — but the sky beyond the windows was still dark.
What could someone possibly want from me in the middle of the night?
Whatever Genya had been trying to warn me about when she told me to lock my door, this surely wasn’t it.
I swiped my hands through the basin, quickly scouring them dry with the towel, and then hurried to the door, arranging my hair over my mating gland to hide its agitation.
It was Ivan, glowering down at me like a red-robed giant. An oprichnik stood at his shoulder. “The Darkling has sent for you.”
I goggled at him, crossing my arms over my chest. “Now?”
Ivan simply shrugged.
“Well give me time to dress, at least.”
“He said now.”
The huge man moved to catch my upper arm, but I slapped his hand aside, my cheeks burning with mortification and outrage.
“Fine,” I snapped, twitching my head to keep a curtain of dark hair between Ivan’s gaze and my distended mating gland. “I’ll come, but don’t blame me if I freeze along the way.”
He nodded, unmoved by my pique. Evidently my grudging compliance was enough.
I stomped along through the corridors behind Ivan and his oprichnik sidekick, blinded by commingled anger at this strange summons and terror at the thought of the hulking Heartrender noticing my disheveled state. To my relief he said nothing — and suddenly we were standing in a formal common room, before a pair of ebony doors carved with an eclipsed sun.
His sigil.
Even blindfolded I would’ve known we were close to the Darkling. His aroma hung in the air like perfume, enfolding me one seductive tendril at a time.
Ivan knocked, and a low, familiar voice from beyond the door called, “Come.”
My fingernails bit into my upper arms as my fingers tightened, and I instinctively drew a gasping breath as Ivan swung the door open.
The sun-kissed man tossing his head toward the crescent of space on the far side. “In you go.”
The darkness drew me like a magnet, and I stepped over the threshold.
The Darkling’s chamber was hexagonal, dominated by a canopied black bed set beneath a domed obsidian vault. Chips of mica or mother-of-pearl glittered from the ceiling in familiar constellations — and the oddness of it struck me at once.
“What is it?”
His voice floated through our dim surroundings like it had that night by the stream, and I found him standing beside a desk across the chamber. He was so heartbreakingly handsome that he could’ve been graven from wood, just like the illusory forest that was carved into the walls around us.
The Darkling’s scent was so rich here that I drank him in with every breath. Even though I was only dressed in my nightgown I felt like an invader as he watched me, waiting for an answer — and I nodded to his canopied bed. “Why have such a beautiful ceiling if you can’t even see it?”
He chuckled wryly.
“What?” I demanded, scowling at him.
“Trust you to make such an observation, Sun Summoner.”
His kefta was folded neatly over the back of his chair, and I suddenly became aware of the way the top buttons of his shirt hung open to reveal the base of his throat. I swallowed hard, startled by the abrupt urge to lick him there, to taste the skin of the man who set my own body alight.
The impulse was disturbingly insistent. I’d never wanted to lick someone before, but at this moment, in the Darkling’s bedchamber, the thought made my mouth water.
He strode toward me languidly, his cool quartz eyes stirring me deep in my core as he finally loomed over me. His plush lips were so close that I could kiss him if I went up on my toes — and something trickled along my crease as my pussy clenched with need.
“It’s dangerous, you being here,” he murmured as he gazed down at me.
I returned his stare with equal force, trying to ignore the way my body was buzzing with his very nearness. “Then why did you send for me?”
“Because I want you, Alina.”
I dragged in a gasping breath. The simplicity of his words was shocking, and the corner of his mouth lifted, as though my startled reaction amused him.
“What’s wrong?” He lifted his hand to my face, grazing my cheek with his knuckles and making me shudder with pleasure. “Haven’t you ever been wanted by a man before?”
I clamped my lips together, not trusting myself to speak, and shook my head — but he pulled away, his expression hardening.
“I’ve been told you had a friend. A soldier.”
His name wrenched through my clenched-tight throat like a curse: “Mal. Oretsev.”
“ Mal .” The Darkling’s frown deepened, like the syllable tasted as sour to him as it did to me now. “Was he your sweetheart?”
“No,” I admitted honestly — though the lingering stuffiness in my nose was a reminder of how long I’d wished for that very thing. How much it had hurt to know that, despite cutting a generous swath through the First Army, Mal hadn’t seen me that way. “Not Mal. Not anyone.”
“Men are fools,” the Darkling hummed — and the way his eyes dropped to my crossed arms made my heart slam at my ribs.
Then his nighted gaze rose again, locking with mine.
“What would you say if I told you I wanted to kiss you right now, Alina who has no sweetheart?”
“I…” I licked my lips. How could I admit that I wanted it desperately, that I was burning for his touch? It didn’t even make sense to me. “I don’t think that would be a good idea, sir.”
“Not sir .” He hesitated, and for a moment his ink-dark eyes flickered with the same vulnerability that was coursing through my veins. “Aleksander.”
Aleksander .
I knew I was gaping, but I couldn’t help myself — and the crease between his brows deepened to a canyon. “That amuses you?”
“Your name.” My head twitched, as though my body was trying to shake sense back into my skull. “It’s just so…”
“…ordinary?” he supplied dryly as I trailed off.
I blurted out the only word that made sense: “ Human .”
“I am human,” he said, even as the smile he offered said the opposite.
He was darkness. Shadow. He was midnight.
“You’re Grisha,” I told him.
“That, too.” He tilted his head to the side, studying me. “As are you, Alinochka.”
A startled murmur escaped me at the endearment. No one had ever called me that before — or any nickname. Not really. Malenchki certainly didn’t count.
“Aleksander,” I murmured as we regarded each other, only a few charged inches of space separating us as he leaned closer.
It was a simple name. A beautiful name. One that surely could belong to a lost, lonely man.
And he was lost; I could see that in his grey gaze just as surely he could recognize the loneliness in me. Like we were both adrift in an endless sky, belonging nowhere and to no one, dreaming of one day finding our tether.
“Aleks…”
The Darkling’s eyes flared at the sound of the nickname, and I wondered how long it had been since someone had called him that.
Was this new for him, too?
He cupped my cheek, gathering the curtain of hair back from my neck to bare my mating gland — and the thing hidden inside me came roaring up at his gentle touch.
A brilliant light flared through the room, radiating from my skin like starlight.
The Darkling didn’t blink. He simply gazed at me — not squinting or burying his face in the crook of his arm as so many had done in the Grand Palace. Not hiding from me, but watching.
Somehow he could bear to look at me without flinching.
I could feel his shadows just as I could feel my light, the twin forces mingling at the edges of the chamber where my sphere of brilliance met the dark, carved-forest walls. Our powers tasted each other, mingling, finding a sort of equilibrium as the illumination pouring out of me subsided to a twilight glow.
“ Moya solnishka ,” the Darkling murmured.
Then he bent and crushed his lips to mine.
His delicious sweetness filled my mouth, quenching me like rainwater as he cradled my jaw. My mating gland throbbed in the hollow of my throat as I responded to his hungry touch, his tongue caressing mine and making me moan — and then his arms were around me, his muscle-corded body claiming mine in a brutal embrace.
“The King would have me killed for touching you like this,” he muttered into my lips between harsh kisses.
“ What? ” I jerked back far enough to stare at him, hating the way his thumb traced distracting circles against my cheek. It made my lower belly tense with need, and I was too horrorstruck for that. “Saints, why? ”
“What king could stand against a Darkling and a Sun Summoner united?” He nipped at my lower lip, sucking gently before releasing me with a reluctance that made my fingers tighten in his silk-soft hair. When had my arms gone about his neck like this? “Especially if they belonged to each other in a way no one else could break.”
My heartbeat stumbled as he nudged me backward, toward the canopied bed.
He was going to claim me.
“Aleksander,” I whispered desperately, as the thing awakening inside me shone brighter with twisted excitement. I’d barely had time to think about suddenly being an Omega and not a Beta, but the ancient instincts were somehow already there, making my thighs messy with need. “Aleks, please— Just think about this—”
“Alina,” he groaned, and as his hips pressed mine back against the mattress, the hard line of his cock dug into my belly. “Bright, beautiful Alinochka, we were made for this.”
His hands found my thighs, parting them and lifting me until I was settled on the edge of the bed. He was there between my splayed legs, urging me to lie back as he bent over me, his mouth reclaiming mine as he cupped my breasts.
The heat of his hands made my spine arch as he fondled me through the thin fabric. I’d never been touched like this, a man’s strong fingers kneading me where I was soft and yielding, my body thrilling with bliss at his forceful touch.
I’d wanted this for so long with another. That I’d feel desire like this now, here, with the most powerful Grisha in Ravka — that I could feel desire at all — made my stomach plummet with guilt.
The Darkling kissed my jaw, my throat, tracing a wet line down to the nightgown’s neckline — and then it was my turn to gasp with pleasure as he teased me through the cotton, finding my nipples and sucking until they were hard and aching, straining through the soaked dress.
My fingers combed through his locks in senseless strokes, twisting tighter in a vain attempt to stop him as he moved lower still.
“Easy, solnishka ,” he chided, his voice smoother than spiced honey. He disengaged my shaking fingers from his shock of black hair, tousled now from my senseless ministrations — and distracted as I was, I thought he looked better like this. Mussed and ravenous, his eyes deep enough to fall into forever. “I’m just going to kiss you a little more. That’s all.”
“Where?” I demanded, but my voice was shaky, and his hands were already rucking my nightgown up over my thighs.
No one — no one — had ever touched me like this. Like my body belonged to him.
Like he couldn’t live without having me.
The guilt vanished, and I cried out at the first soft kiss on the crest of my mound, but his hands were there at my shoulders the next moment, coaxing me back down against the rich black quilt.
“It’s all right, Alina. Lie down, I’m not going to hurt you.” The Darkling’s lips curved in a wicked smile as he added, “—much.”
I slowly obeyed, lying back and shaking as his heated breath skirled over my bare thighs, finding my crux. My knees wanted to snap shut as he dipped into my sensitive folds, but he was between my legs, his broad shoulders wedging me open.
“Aleks,” I begged, fisting the quilt on either side of my body as he nuzzled into my crease.
He lapped into my sex, softly at first but with increasing boldness as my body started to tremble from the ecstasy that he was rousing in me.
His strong arms looped around my thighs, and though I tried to bite my lower lip to silence the guttural noises coming out of me, there was no fighting it. Soon I was moaning and whimpering, my body seized again, thrashing with primal lust as he worked a finger into my cunt.
“Shh.” I could feel how wet I was as he hushed me, his breath cool against my damp skin. He slid another finger into me and pressed deeper before receding, surging into me in slow circles, alternating thrusts with wanton sucking at my clit. “It’s all right, Alinochka. Give yourself to me.”
“I can’t.” My voice was hoarse with a desire I knew I couldn’t satisfy. “If there’s danger, I don’t want—”
I mewled as the Darkling drew his fingers out of me — and abruptly he was looming over me again, the bed sagging as he leaned on his forearms. He peered down at me, his quartz gaze pinning me to his bed as much as his body. “Don’t want what , Alina?”
“I don’t want you to be in danger because of me,” I murmured, the room brightening as my cheeks flushed. “I don’t want the king or anyone else to hurt you. Not on my account.”
“Alya … my Alina.” His breath tasted like me, and his cock nudged into the crux of my thighs again, straining through his pants, thick with need. His body was as hungry for me as his implacable gaze. “I’m already yours, don’t you see that?”
“You don’t even know me!” I protested, the chamber glowing brighter as light raced from my every pore.
“I know that you’re my balance,” the Darkling told me, his thumb tracing the line of my cheekbone. “And I’m yours. Everything else is just trappings.”
The light inside me knew he was right.
He kissed me again, shoving one arm under the small of my back and dragging me higher on the bed, settling me so that my head rested on his pillows.
His scent was intoxicating — but just as it threatened to pull me under, he drew back, leaving me wanting.
I clutched at his shirt, not ready to feel his face at my sex again. I was already achingly empty; even his fingers hadn’t been enough. “Please, Aleks— don’t—”
“Patience, solnishka ,” he murmured, returning to print a soft kiss on the tip of my nose. “I want to do something else for you.”
He stood on the bed and reached up — and with a grunt, he tore the dark fabric away to reveal the glittering constellations set in his bedroom’s domed ceiling.
All the sunless stars shone with my light, but none so bright as his smile as he gazed down at me. “Better?”
“Thank you, Alpha,” I sighed as he tossed the ripped fabric aside and returned to me, his weight pressing me down on the soft bed. The word felt alien in my mouth, but I loved it.
Alpha . Yes, he was that to me already.
“Anything for you, Omega.” He kissed my forehead, strangely tender. “I want your first time to be special.”
My stomach swooped. Saints .
So he was going to claim me. Tonight. Now.
His lips were against mine in the next instant, and his hips pressed into me harder, dragging his hard length along my slit. His slick-dampened trousers ground against my pussy perfectly, and I met him in each movement, bliss sparking at my clit each time we crashed together.
“I want you, Aleks,” I muttered when my lips began to ache and the cramping in my sex was beginning to become unbearable. “I need to feel you inside me. Please.”
A rumble shuddered through the Darkling’s chest, and he reared back on his knees, yanking his shirt off over his head.
I tried not to drool as I stared up at him. His body looked like it had been chiseled from angular marble, his skin marked by ghostly scars — but he must not have noticed the way I was staring, because he only tossed his shirt onto the floor after the torn canopy.
His hands found the hem of my dress and urging it higher, lifting me bodily to scoot the edge under the curve of my arse. After that he simply dragged the whole thing off and I was left hunching self-consciously before him, utterly naked.
“No.” The Darkling’s elegant fingers encircled my wrists like living manacles, drawing my arms away from my chest to admire me, and his depthless eyes drank in every inch of my naked body. “You’re lovely.”
The words made my breath catch in my chest.
He frowned, cupping my chin and forcing me to meet his gaze. “What?”
It was mortifying, but the words spilled out of me regardless: “No one’s ever told me that before.”
“My Alinochka,” the Darkling groaned softly, like he was being torn apart as he stroked my cheek, watching me. “You’re beautiful. And more than that, you’re strong. You’re my equal — any fool could see that.”
Even as his shadows swirled through the chamber, ribbons of darkness weaving through my sphere of light, his skin seared mine. I was so unaccustomed to being touched that every new sensation he woke in me made me ravenous for more.
I liked being touched.
No — I loved it.
Not just being touched, but touched by him .
The Darkling’s hands lingered on my tits, plucking at my nipples until they were diamond-hard, kissing me, taunting me with every firm drag of his cock between my thighs.
When he brushed the first soft kiss to my mating gland, I felt like I was on the verge of exploding with ecstasy.
“Aleks, please fuck me,” I begged, caressing his hair, his face, his back, drawing my knees up around his waist to entice him. “I know you want to.”
He laughed softly — and though he lifted his hips away, this time one of his hands moved to the catch of his trousers. “Since you asked so prettily…”
I watched in fascination as unfastened his pants, grunting again as he shoved both them and the band of his underwear down to his mid-thighs. His erect cock thudded against the flat plane of my stomach, warm and firm, twitching with his pulse as he stared down at me.
“Don’t be scared,” he murmured, grasping himself in his hand — and it couldn’t have been a mistake that his fingers grazed my skin as he stroked himself.
A smile tugged at my lips, and I lifted my hand to his stubbled cheek, delighting in the way his eyes went wide as I caressed him. I couldn’t be afraid, now that I was starting to accept who and what I was.
Light had no reason to fear the dark.
His breath warmed my lips as his cock found me, drawing the wetness from my cunt up to my clit, swirling his slick-drenched head around the bud of nerves. It was a beautiful anguish, and I rocked my hips to meet him, greedy for any part of him that he would surrender.
“I want to belong to you, Alina.” He finally notched himself into me there , finding the wet hollow at my very center. “Just as much as I want you to belong to me. I’ll never turn away from you, I swear it.”
His words went straight to my heart.
“Then take me,” I pleaded, my voice tight with need.
The Darkling’s full lips parted, and I whined as he brought his mouth down to my mating gland, sealing against me in a kiss.
He drew his tongue across my gland as he worked his cock into my cunt, stretching me until I was whimpering and full of him, panting with unvoiced need. The way he scrawled wet ribbons over my skin sent jolts of bliss skittering through my nerves; every part of me was opening to him, just as he was opening himself to me.
We were shadows and stars, only complete together.
“My Alina,” he rasped. His cockhead pinched deep inside me, but it was exquisite, overwhelming — and I sighed in relief as he withdrew a few inches to thrust into me again, harder this time. “You like that, solnishka? ”
I nodded, driven past words.
The Darkling. Before everything at Kribirsk I’d only known him by his dark sledge — and now he was buried in my cunt, straining into me and groaning with each meeting of our bodies.
He rutted into me in a harsh tempo, fingers bruise-tight on my flesh, only slowing as I whimpered. “Too much, my sunlight?”
“No,” I breathed, pushing up to meet him. “Harder ... please, Aleks, I need it—”
Fuck me, my shadow, take me for your own…
The Darkling kissed me again — tenderly, and only for a moment. Then he snapped his hips, driving into me harder, and I clutched at him as we found our rhythm.
My body was ready for this, my pussy drenching us both with slick as he drove into me again and again. His thick shaft splintered me to my very center, throbbing pleasurably as he quickened.
The edge drew nearer, and even before I was ready I was coming apart, the orgasm claiming me as light poured from every square centimeter of my naked body.
“Alinochka,” he gasped.
Heat spurted into my womb, the rush of his seed making me scream with pleasure.
The world spun as the Darkling rolled me on top of him, and my breath came in sobbing gasps as his knot swelled in my cunt, locking us together.
“Aleks, please,” I begged. His cock, his cum, his knot; all of them were inside me, burning like an inferno, and he was still moving, instinctively forcing himself deeper. “It’s so much, Alpha— help me—”
His lips were there at the hollow of my throat. Then a shockwave of rapture tore through my nerves as his teeth found my mating gland, shattering it in a single fierce bite.
The overwhelming pressure in my cunt faded to a dreamy euphoria as hormones sang through my blood, and I let him draw my face down to his own throat. His body tasted like snow and the northern wind, and when my teeth crushed his gland he went rigid beneath me, his cock rock-hard as the rest of him.
“Alya—” he gritted out.
His arms were around me, and then we were moving together again, my pussy clenching his knot in measured throbs, wringing out more of his fiery spend. Somehow I knew there was another load in him; mindless as I was, I wanted it.
I needed it.
“You’re mine, Aleks,” I panted. There was no other man for me but him; there never had been, even though I hadn’t realized as much until tonight. “ My Alpha. And I’m yours.”
“Yes,” the Darkling crooned. “ Fuck , my little Omega, my sunlight…”
“My shadow,” I murmured, and nipped his lower lip hard enough to draw a trickle of blood.
He dragged me beneath him again, fucking into me with a savagery that I knew would leave bruises. But I loved it — and already I felt stronger than I ever had.
I would heal from these contusions, just as he would from the marks I was leaving on him.
My fingers knotted in his hair as he pistoned deeper, thrusts muted by his swollen knot. I didn’t have to chase my pleasure; I knew I was nearing again, just as he was nearing, too.
He was right. We balanced each other, belonged to each other, and always would.
“Come with me, Alpha.” I licked his shattered gland again, savoring the taste of him, blood and sweat and the wind racing through frost-tipped branches. “Come inside me, I want to feel you let go.”
“My Alinochka,” Aleks groaned into my lips, cradling me close as he transfixed me to my core.
Then he was shouting his release, coming undone with me again as the shadows at the edges of the room danced and the stars in the obsidian vault overhead blazed with my light.
🌘🖤🌒