Reject Me Twice

Chapter 63

[Damon’s POV]

My blood was still humming when I left the ritual chamber.

The residual magic crawled beneath my skin like something alive—electric, restless, pulsing in time with a heartbeat that refused to settle no matter how many deep breaths I forced through my lungs.

The visions lingered behind my eyes every time I blinked. A thousand years of twins killing each other. Mothers weeping over infants they knew were destined to be enemies.

Blood on ancient stone, sacrifice corrupted into slaughter, and the Covenant's golden light finally, mercifully, confirming that Kira and I had broken the cycle.

I'd made sure Elara didn't come. Not from mistrust—that instinct had quieted to something barely audible in recent weeks, replaced by a protectiveness I hadn't realized I was capable of feeling for anyone outside my twin bond.

The ritual involved ancient magic whose consequences Morgath couldn't fully predict, and the thought of Elara standing in that chamber while forces older than the kingdom itself tore through the air had produced a visceral, chest-tightening refusal that I hadn't bothered to dress in rational language.

I'd simply told her to stay, and the look she'd given me—steady, searching, seeing straight through the command to the fear beneath it—had almost broken me right there.

I didn't go to my chambers. Didn't seek out advisors or the stack of intelligence reports waiting on my desk.

My feet carried me through the palace corridors with a purpose my conscious mind hadn't authorized, navigating turns and staircases on an instinct that bypassed thought entirely, pulling me toward the one place my mind had been circling since the visions faded.

Elara.

I couldn't name what drove me. Only that the ritual had cracked something open inside my chest—something the visions had pried loose with images of death and sacrifice and centuries of loss so staggering that the human mind wasn't built to contain them. I was starving.

Not for food, not for rest, not for the strategic certainty that usually grounded me. For proof. Proof that something in my life was real and warm and mine.

That the world contained more than ancient blood debts and political machinery and the endless, grinding weight of a crown I'd never asked to wear.

Her door wasn't locked. It swung open under my hand, and Elara turned from her vanity with lips parting in surprise that traveled across her features like a wave breaking—shock first, then concern, then something she'd been careful never to let me see.

Something darker. Hungrier. A want that lived behind the composed intelligence of her brown eyes and surfaced now in the unguarded moment before she could reconstruct her composure.

Her hair was loose around her shoulders—dark waves freed from the practical arrangements she wore during the day, softening her face in the candlelight.

Her outer gown had been removed, and the thin shift she wore offered almost nothing between her skin and the warm glow that painted the room in amber shadows.

She was beautiful. Not in the way the court measured beauty, but in the way that mattered—real, unperformed, standing in her own chambers without armor or pretense, and the sight of her like that, unguarded and honest, hit me with a force that made the residual magic in my veins surge.

She opened her mouth—to ask what was wrong, what had happened, whether the ritual had succeeded—and I didn't let her finish.

Three strides carried me across the room. My hands found her face, cupping her jaw, tilting her mouth up to mine, and I kissed her like I was drowning and she was air.

Like the visions had shown me exactly what losing everything looked like, and I refused to waste another second pretending I didn't want this. Want her.

The pretending was over. The walls were irrelevant. The careful, measured distance I'd been maintaining between us since the engagement was a luxury I could no longer afford, because life was shorter and more brutal than I'd understood before tonight, and Elara was warm and real and standing right in front of me, and I was done.

She gasped against my mouth—a sharp, startled intake of breath that vibrated against my lips. Then she melted.

Her hands fisted in the front of my shirt, pulling me closer with a strength that surprised me, and the sound she made when I deepened the kiss—a low, desperate hum that resonated through her chest and into mine—sent heat flooding down my spine with a force that obliterated every rational thought I'd ever had.

She arched into me slowly, deliberately, her body pressing against mine until there was nothing between us but fabric and restraint, and both were thinning fast.

I walked her backward, my hands sliding from her face to her waist, and when her legs hit the edge of the bed she pulled me down with her, fingers already working at the laces of my tunic with an urgency that matched the fire building in my blood.

I helped her—tearing where the knots wouldn't give, impatient in a way I'd never allowed myself to be, and the sound of fabric ripping under our combined desperation drew a breathless laugh from her throat that pressed against the skin of my neck like something holy.

That laugh undid me more thoroughly than any touch could have—genuine, surprised, delighted, the sound of a woman who'd been waiting for this moment with a patience I didn't deserve and was no longer willing to test.

I undressed her slowly despite the urgency burning through every nerve in my body. Peeled the shift from her shoulders with hands that shook from restraint rather than nerves, and followed the path of bare skin with my mouth—the ridge of her collarbone, the curve of her breast, the soft dip of her waist where her body narrowed before flaring into hips that fit perfectly beneath my palms.

She trembled beneath me, her breath hitching with every press of my lips, her fingers threading through my hair and tightening when I found the places that made her gasp—the sensitive skin below her ear, the inside of her wrist, the curve where her neck met her shoulder.

When she pulled me back up to kiss her, there was nothing slow about it. Her nails raked down my back, and the sting of it drew a groan from somewhere deep in my chest that I couldn't have contained if I'd tried.

I settled between her thighs, and when I finally pushed into her, Elara's back arched off the bed and her lips parted around my name—not my title, not Your Majesty, just Damon, raw and breathless and real, and the sound of it in her voice nearly shattered me.

I moved inside her like I was trying to memorize the feeling—every sensation, every sound, the tight heat of her body welcoming mine, the way her breath caught on each stroke, the small, devastating noises she made that told me exactly what she needed without words.

Her legs wrapped around me, pulling me deeper, and I buried my face against her neck, breathing her in—lavender and warmth and something that tasted like trust, like safety, like the thing I'd been searching for since Seraphine destroyed my ability to believe it existed.

She met every thrust, her body rising to mine with an honesty that was more intimate than the act itself—no performance, no calculation, just Elara, responding to me with the same straightforward authenticity she brought to everything.

Her hands gripped my shoulders like she was afraid I'd disappear, and I held her like she was the only real thing in a world full of shadows, and we moved together until the pleasure crested and broke over both of us in waves that left us gasping and shaking and holding on.

Afterward, we lay tangled together. Skin damp. Heartbeats gradually slowing from the impossible height they'd climbed.

Elara traced idle patterns on my chest while I stared at the ceiling, one arm locked around her waist as though letting go might break whatever spell had carried us here.

Neither of us spoke for a long time. We didn't need to. Something between us had shifted—irreversibly, unmistakably, in the way that tectonic plates shift to create new landscapes. The walls I'd built to survive Seraphine's betrayal didn't crumble tonight. They didn't need to.

Elara had simply walked through them, as if they were never there at all—as if the fortifications I'd spent years constructing were made of nothing more substantial than fear, and she'd never been afraid of me enough to notice them.

I pulled her closer. She pressed her lips to my jaw—soft, unhurried, a gesture so tender it made my throat tighten.

And for the first time in my life, I didn't flinch from the warmth. I leaned into it.