Page 39 of Sereis
"See?" Sereis's breath stirred my hair as he spoke. "Davoren's fire doesn't have to incinerate. It can guide, can force choices. Morgrith's shadows don't interfere with Zephyron's storms when they're working toward the same goal—they create cover for the lightning to strike unseen."
The storm dragon proved his point, lightning crackling from the pale blue doll in a pattern that would have been visible from miles away—except the shadows swallowed the light, made the attack invisible until it hit. The silver wind dragon circled above, creating downdrafts that made flight impossible, ensuring the villain remained grounded where the others could reach him.
"And when they combine their strengths . . ." He had all five dragons move as one, their different powers layering rather than conflicting. Fire and storm created superheated air that the wind dragon spun into a prison. Earth and shadow made walls that couldn't be climbed or shadow-stepped through. The villain doll had nowhere to go, no trick that could overcome five unified forces.
The wooden figure toppled over and stayed down.
"Solmar is clever, yes," Sereis continued, his arms tightening around me slightly. "But he's never faced Dragon Lords truly united. His plans, his manipulations, his stolen magic—they all required us to be enemies. Now that we're allies, every strategy he's developed is useless."
The truth of it soaked through my exhaustion like that warm milk, settling something anxious in my chest. I relaxed back against him, my weight sinking into his solid presence. My hands had found the gaps between his shirt buttons withoutconscious thought, fingers seeking skin-to-skin contact that my transformed nervous system craved like air.
His chest under my palm was cool but not cold, smooth except for the new frost patterns that matched mine. I could feel his heartbeat—slower than human normal, steady as winter's patience. The contact sent little sparks through my exhaustion, not quite arousal but something adjacent, something that suggested my body was beginning to remember it had needs beyond sleep.
"Better?" he asked, his hand coming up to stroke my hair. His fingers found the aurora threads, following them from root to tip with gentle precision.
I nodded against his chest, turning slightly to press my face into his neck. His scent was stronger there—winter pine and male and mine. The last thought surprised me with its possessiveness, but it was true. The Pact had made us each other's in ways human marriage could never achieve. He was mine to touch, to claim, to need.
My position in his lap had started innocent—or as innocent as anything between us could be after what we'd shared. But as littlespace gradually receded, pulled back by his comfort and the demonstration that my fears were manageable, I became aware of our bodies in different ways. Of how my thighs spread across his lap. Of his hands on my waist, thumbs stroking through the cloud-soft pajamas. Of the way each breath pressed my chest against his.
Without really deciding to, I shifted position. Instead of sitting sideways across his lap like a child seeking comfort, I turned to straddle him properly. My knees settled on either side of his hips, and the change in position pressed us together in ways that made us both inhale sharply.
"Mira," he said, and my name on his lips was half warning, half plea.
"I'm here," I replied, though it meant more than location. I was here, present, no longer floating in exhausted littlespace. I was here with him, aware of him, wanting him despite the bone-deep tiredness.
My hands moved from his chest to his shoulders, fingers tracing the frost patterns that disappeared beneath his collar. His hands tightened on my waist, not pushing me away but not pulling me closer either. Waiting, always waiting for me to choose, even now when the bond sang between us with need that had been building since our interrupted scene days ago.
"You're exhausted," he pointed out, but his voice had gone rough in ways that suggested his control was fighting a losing battle with desire.
"I am," I agreed, then deliberately rolled my hips against him, feeling evidence that he was far from unaffected. "But I'm also yours. And we both know what comes next."
Chapter 9
Hisarmstightenedaroundme as he stood, lifting me from the scattered toys with that liquid grace that made every movement seem choreographed by winter itself. The journey from Nursery to master bedroom passed in a blur of ice-corridors that parted before us like breath. My face stayed pressed against his neck, breathing in his scent while my fingers clutched at his shirt, needing the anchor of his solid presence as exhaustion warred with rising need in my transformed body.
The master bedroom announced itself before we entered—a shift in the air itself, like stepping from regular winter into the heart of a star. The doors swung open at our approach without Sereis touching them. What lay beyond stole what little breath I had left.
The bed dominated the space not through size alone but through impossibility. Its frame was pure light, captured and compressed into solid form that threw prismatic rainbows across every surface. The posts twisted up toward a beautiful canopy—living aurora borealis, somehow contained and shaped to flow in eternal curtains above where we would sleep. Green-gold light rippled through purple-blue depths, occasionally sparking with colors that had no names, that made my transformed eyes water trying to process them. The whole construction hummed with a frequency I felt in my bones, in the frost patterns that pulsed beneath my skin in response.
Cloud-silk sheets covered the mattress, their surface seeming to breathe with anticipation. They were the white of fresh snow under moonlight, but when the aurora light touched them, they reflected back softer versions of those impossible colors. The pillows—too many to count—had been arranged with the same obsessive precision Sereis brought to everything, creating a nest that promised to cradle without suffocating.
He laid me down with the kind of care reserved for holy relics, his hands supporting my head and lower back until the cloud-silk accepted my weight with a sigh that sounded almost sentient. The sheets were cool against my skin, the perfect temperature of shade on a summer day. Above me, the canopy shifted in response to my presence, the colors deepening, becoming more complex, as if it recognized me as belonging here.
Sereis didn't join me on the bed. Instead, he sank to his knees beside it, the movement deliberate, calculated. Reverent. His pale eyes had gone dark with something that transcended simple desire—this was worship, recognition, a claiming that went beyond the physical.
"Let me see you," he said, though it wasn't really a request. His hands found the hem of my pajama top, fingers tracing the tiny twinkling stars embedded in the fabric before beginning to lift it with agonizing slowness.
Each inch revealed earned his complete attention. The frost patterns on my stomach made him pause, his breath catching as he traced one spiraling design with a fingertip so light I might have imagined it. The pajama top whispered over my headand away, but his focus remained absolute—studying how the transformation had rebuilt me, how the silver-light in my veins created a subtle luminescence beneath my skin.
The pajama bottoms received the same methodical attention. He hooked his fingers in the elastic waistband, and I lifted my hips to help him, the movement making the frost patterns flare brighter. His intake of breath was sharp, appreciative, as more of my transformed skin was revealed. The pants joined the top somewhere beyond my concern, because Sereis was looking at me like I was a miracle made manifest, like every second of his immortal existence had led to this moment of revelation.
"Perfect," he breathed, and the word carried weight, carried magic, carried the kind of truth that remade reality around itself. "Every line, every mark, every inch of you—perfect."
His worship began at my shoulder, at the exact spot where our bond had first manifested. His lips pressed against the silver-blue tracery there, and the contact sent lightning through every nerve. Not just a kiss but a claim, his mouth learning the new texture of my skin, the way the frost patterns were slightly raised, creating ridges and valleys his tongue could explore.
That tongue—impossibly cool against my fevered skin—traced the intricate design down my arm with devastating precision. He followed every curl and spiral, mapping the transformation with his mouth while I writhed against the cloud-silk sheets. The temperature difference should have been uncomfortable, but instead it made every nerve ending sing, made me hyperaware of each point of contact. His tongue was like living winter, leaving trails of sensation that lingered long after he'd moved on.
"These marks," he murmured against my wrist, where the patterns had become so complex they looked like equations written in ice, "they're not random. They're a map of what you are to me. What we are together."
