I guess I passed because he just hugs me again after he’s done. “You frightened me, Reverence. It took nearly an hour for my shell to fix the wound after I pulled out the knife. And I was so afeared that I wouldn’t find you. If anything had happened to you. If those men had hurt you, or even touched you…”
He lets out a great huff of air and it steams my back, hot and panicked.
Now he’s breathing hard and holding me even tighter.
I find myself in the weird position of raising my arms to awkwardly hug him back. “It’s okay,” I tell him. “I’m fine. I promise you, I’m fine. Plus, I got to ride a dragon, so look at me now.”
He pulls back again with a severe look. Then he lets out a long grumble.
It takes me a few confused seconds to ask, “Wait, are you laughing?”
“Yes, Reverence. I undervalued and perhaps will never value enough how diverting you can be. You make me laugh.”
“I make you laugh,” I repeat, feeling a little crazed.
He abruptly stops laughing. “You have great confusion. Tell me why, Reverence.”
I shake my head at him. “This wasn’t how I expected this conversation to go.”
“What did you expect other than my utter relief?” he asks, sounding just as confused as I feel.
“I don’t know. I figured maybe you’d yell at me for straight shanking you in the neck. Maybe break the other arm for trying to run away again. Kill a few relatives….”
That’s another joke, but his face darkens. “I would never visit physical harm upon you. Nor would I kill any of your family members. I made you that promise the day I sent your uncle away.”
“Yeah, I know what you said. And I’m a big believer in promises myself. I never break them. But I figured since it was you making the promise, it was just another trick. Like, you know, hypnotizing a famous basketball player and getting him to become my boyfriend, just so you could gain access to me. Plus, I stabbed you…”
A strange guilt washes over me when I admit this out loud. And I bow my head, my eyes dropping and staying on the ground. Just like my infamously awkward mom.
“Look at me, Reverence. Please, give me your eyes.”
I never have problems looking people in the eye. I’m Ola fucking Greenwolf and I don’t play that shy she-wolf shit.
But now it feels like I’m dragging my eyes through mud as I lift them to meet his.
“I am not the drakkon I was before,” he tells me, his glowing gaze burning into mine. “I do not know how I can convince you of this. But the drakkon who manipulated you, who hurt you, who humiliated you because his ego could not accept such an unexpected fated mate—he is gone now. I have taken his place, and I will never hurt you again. You could stab me with a thousand different knives, and my only concern would be for your safety.”
I let out another breath I didn’t realize I was holding, but this one is filled with relief. “Really?”
“Truly, Reverence,” he answers. “I no longer care about myself, my subjects, my home planet even. You and our hatchling are my entire world, and the only future I want.”
Okay…okay…I’m trying to stay a cynical bitch here. I’m trying to be the bad-ass queen I was raised to be. But I’ve still got adrenaline going from all the attempted murder and running away and flying through the air. And the way he’s looking down at me under the three-quarters moon, his head bent so low, like there’s truly nothing more important than me in his entire world.
No one’s ever looked at me like that before.
Suddenly I’m grabbing on to him with both hands. Pulling his face down to mine. Kissing him. And not just a little thank you peck for saving me from the Deliverance hunters either.
This is me, the wolf queen, claiming him, the dragon king, with my mouth. Invading with my tongue and demanding that he take what I have to give with a kiss.
And after a shocked moment, Damianos kisses me back, his beard scraping into my face as he devours me.
Chapter Thirty
Things catch fire pretty quickly from there.
He picks me up in his arms, there’s some door sliding and some stair climbing, then some laying me down like I’m a delicate crystal on his extremely large bed.
Seriously, who paid for all the custom furniture in here? I know that wasn’t in the original budget!
But all questions about paperwork blank out of my mind when the two dicks suddenly descend from his webbed stomach, dropping right on down, like “hello again.”
And yes, the second one is still squirming.
“What exactly is the purpose of that secondary dick?” I ask, my voice cracking on the question.