Sewn & Scarred (The Fated Creations Trilogy #3)

Chapter One Hundred ThreeMaddox

Chapter One Hundred Three

Maddox

“ A re you sure you don’t need anything?” Evaline asked my mother as I led my father to their bathing chamber. Evaline must’ve seen where I went, and understood why because I felt her move closer. “Let me help with that,” she said softly, coming in behind me to prepare my father’s bath and heat it quickly with her magic.

“Thank you, dear,” my mother said, reaching for Evaline’s hand once she finished. “I can take it from here.”

Her voice was solemn, and her eyes worried, as she took my father from my arms, and lowered the both of them to their knees.

Before we left, I saw the way she curled an arm around his head, held him to her as he cried softly, but then I shut the door behind us, and we left their suite entirely.

Evaline and I made our way toward the front of the home, and as we passed the main threshold, she turned to look up at me.

Even after the hours I’d spent beside her since the battle, since her change, the sight of her eyes still took my breath away. With the moon streaming through the windows behind me, the silver specks in her irises tossed light around the room.

And then I watched as they puddled with tears.

“Your first war,” I said softly, understanding her pain, as I reached for her hand.

She swallowed and nodded as I steered us for the staircase.

We ascended them in silence, but when we got to the door, she spoke.

“I know I should’ve expected death,” she whispered as I turned the knob. “Gods, I mean there was a time when I thought that I was well acquainted with death, that I’d grown used to it—”

Her voice cracked, and I placed my hand gently on the small of her back and led her through the threshold, closing the door behind us.

“But that was…” she whispered, tilting her head. “That was too much.”

She sent the image of all the pyres, of all the bodies, on the beach we’d come from only hours ago, down the bond and I reached for her.

“I know,” I whispered against her hair as she fell into my embrace. “I wish I could say it gets easier.”

She shook her head slightly from where her face was pressed against my chest.

“I hope the Gods were right,” she mumbled against me. “I hope this was the final war.”

I nodded against her hair, swallowed the unease I felt at whether that was true, and curled my arms tighter around her.

Her hands moved to slide down my sides and over my abdomen.

“Are you all healed?” she asked softly, pulling back to lift my shirt and look.

She was healed the moment she drank my blood and became a Silver, but I still had gashes and tears. I hadn’t wanted to risk drinking from her, since it would’ve made me a Silver after our blood mingled in her veins, so I was waiting for them to heal on their own, even in a fatigued and less-than-nourished state.

I pulled back to look down with her and saw that my wounds were closed, but the scars were fresh and sensitive. The skin had just barely sewn back together.

At the thought of scars, I pulled her hands into mine and looked to her wrists. Where I was hoping to see the scars from her barbed wire gone, they still remained, even through the change.

They were an old injury. Of course they wouldn’t heal.

She looked to them, too. Underneath the blood that coated her arms from the fight, they could be seen. Small, white scars.

She took a shaky breath.

“It’s alright,” she said, unconvincingly.

I swallowed the hatred that slithered up my throat. Even in death, Vasier haunted her.

“I just hoped you wouldn’t be forced to remember that day every time you looked at them,” I said, my voice sad.

She looked up at me, brows furrowed.

“That day, some awful things happened,” her eyes glittered as she looked between each of mine. “But it was also the day you came back to me, and I want to remember that moment forever.”

My lips lifted into a small smile and I raised my hands to slide over her cheeks, to push back all the flyaway hairs—some stiff with blood—out of her face. Then, I kissed her.

And the world fell away. Everything that had happened, maybe ever, that caused us pain, seemed to dim. Her marriage to Bassel, both of her abductions, my turn. The war, our wounds, the uncertainty of the future.

Because kissing her reminded me that we survived. That the war was over, that Vasier was dead, that she was more protected than ever as a brand-new immortal.

So much had happened, but in the moment, all I could think about was Evaline. How much I loved her, and how thankful I was that we’d both come back from those ships and for the eternity that sat before us.

I knew the same notions tossed through her mind, because she shared them down the bond, and I felt the love and gratitude come down it.

One kiss slid into two, until she was parting her lips, and our tongues met. Until I backed her up a pace, and she was pressed against the bookshelves that lined the wall.

A thousand love stories—that I’d read just as many times—towered above us, around us, but I didn’t need them anymore. Not like I used to.

My love story was softly gasping my name as my lips moved to her jaw. She was moving her hands up into my hair and pulling me closer. She was sliding her lips to my neck.

My eyes popped open in realization, somehow in everything that had happened, I’d forgotten that she’d need to feed.

Gods she was probably ravenous the entire day.

I pulled back, hands rising to cradle her face.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart. You should’ve fed hours ago, you should’ve told me you were hungry.”

Her eyes were wide as she looked up at me, lips pursed.

“It seemed inappropriate given what we were doing at the time,” she said quietly, and as if on cue, her stomach rumbled.

I couldn’t help the small laugh that fell from my lips at it, at the way she looked up at me as if she had no idea what she was doing.

“It’s easy,” I said softly, tilting my chin up to bare my neck to her. “Just aim for the artery. Your fangs should descend.”

When she didn’t move, I looked back down at her.

“What’s wrong?”

Worry flashed through her eyes.

“What if I take too much?”

I shook my head. “You shouldn’t. Kova mates can’t drain each other just from feeding, I don’t see why it’d be different because you’re a Silver. But just in case, I’ll let you know if you start to take too much.”

“I’m just as strong as you now, what if you can’t stop me?”

My smile was immediate. “I’m sure I’ll find a way.”

Her eyes lit with amusement and her hand fell from my chest toward her thigh. “I think I’d feel more comfortable if you held this,” she said, brandishing the dagger I’d had made for her.

I lowered my forehead to hers and pressed her head back against the bookshelf.

“Alright, I get it,” I said, chuckling. “I’ve learned my lesson.”

She fluttered her lashes. “It’s just, don’t you know it would only take me a second to kill you?”

My smile widened, and a blush erupted over my neck as I threw my head back.

“Okay, okay, are you done using my own words against me?”

She took a deep breath and straightened against the bookshelf.

“Yes.”

I swallowed at the way her eyes churned with desire. At the way exhilaration seeped through my blood at the thought of what would come next. Of what it would feel like, with her. Not when she was drinking to heal herself, but when she was an immortal, too.

I steadied my hands on her hips, and she placed hers on my chest. Her lips met my neck, placed a few kisses along my throat, and then I felt her lips part. She inhaled and I knew her fangs were elongating, and then I felt the soft graze of them along my skin before they sank into it.

This was not like when she drank to heal herself.

I gasped at the feel, at the immediate pleasure that sprouted through my veins, and my hands on her hips tightened.

She moaned softly, both aloud and in vibrations through my neck, and I shivered at the feel of it.

One of her hands slid up my chest and curled against the other side of my neck, gently holding me against her as she took another pull.

Every time she’d ever told me to feed flashed through my mind, and I felt guilty for depriving her of it.

I’d always been worried I would tire her, but after feeling the pleasure that beat through my veins every moment her fangs were embedded into them, I understood why she wanted it.

This was marvelous.

Her other hand fell from my chest and gripped the shirt at my side, tugging me closer. I stumbled forward into her, but she didn’t seem to mind her small collision with the bookshelf or the fact that a few books rained down around us from the impact. Her heart raced and she took another drag.

“Gods, Eva,” I moaned into the night. At my words, she tilted her hips into mine, and the move caused her to brush against my erection, restrained by my pants.

A breath shuddered out of me at the contact. My hands rose from her hips, and held onto the bookshelf on either side of her head, trying to steady myself. I didn’t want to interrupt her before I needed to, she needed to feed, but every fiber of my being was desperate to sink my cock into her. To magnify this feeling.

But then she removed her fangs, removed her lips, and I was left dazed for a moment, coming down from the pleasure.

“Are you okay?” she asked, breathlessly, looking up at me.

I tilted my head down, gasped for air, and nodded.

But I didn’t speak, only closed the distance between our lips.

She reacted just as quickly, hands moving to remove my holsters while I undid hers.

“We need to wash,” I said, reaching for her again as both of our shirts were discarded.

We were covered in blood and sand and seawater.

But she shook her head. “I don’t care.”

We tripped our way into our room.

“We’ll ruin our bed,” I said against her lips while I unfastened her pants.

“I don’t care,” she repeated as her hands slid down my abs to undo my pants.

But in the end, it didn’t matter. We never made it to our bed, falling to the floor beside it, where we both tripped in our haste to remove our pants and boots.

We were laughing as we hit the ground. We shimmied our pants down, and when that wasn’t fast enough, we were yanking at each other’s until we were both bare, and she was pushing my shoulders down.

I let out a surprised breath at her newfound strength as she slid on top of me, planting her knees on either side of my hips.

“You’re not mortal anymore,” I whispered, looking up at her.

Her brows furrowed as she leaned over to kiss me, and I smiled.

“I don’t have to be scared of accidentally killing you during,” I elaborated.

She planted her hands on my chest and straightened before a sly grin slid over her face.

“You mean you don’t have to be as gentle anymore,” she corrected.

I chuckled as I moved my hands up to rest on top of her thighs.

“I can be as gentle as you want me to be,” I said, sitting up to meet her. “Or as un- gentle,” my lips moved toward hers. “Your choice.”

Her hand fell between us and my flirty grin fell right off my face as her hand enclosed over me, and tilted me to her entrance.

“Not gentle,” she breathed before sitting down, sliding me in, until our hips met in one move.

My response was choked from my throat as I looked at her wide-eyed.

“I want to feel , tonight,” her voice was sultry as she wove her hands up into my hair and started to move on top of me.

“Noted,” I finally managed to gasp out as she rose and fell above me.

Her lips met mine, and I groaned as her fangs brushed over my lower lip.

“Gods, we have so much to explore with your newfound immortality,” I mused against her lips.

I curled a hand around the back of her neck, helping her to move over me, and used the other to hug her to me.

“Good thing we have forever to do so,” she whispered back.

Happiness erupted through my chest. It still didn’t feel real, and I wondered if it ever would. But I pushed the thought away as she tossed her head back to moan. As the end of her braid reached to brush lightly over my arm. As I watched her sigh and whimper and gasp.

My eternity.

At last.