ttznovel Chapter 435: "I love you, Thalor,"
Chapter 435: "I love you, Thalor,"
The question made him freeze entirely. He stared at me, his lips parting slightly as his violet eyes searched mine for a prank, a joke, or some hidden queenly agenda.
The water around him rippled with the sudden, chaotic spike of his heartbeat.
"Why... why would you ask that?" he stammered, his poise completely dissolving. "You are the Land Mother. You accepted me and gave me a home, and these children. You have been more than fair."
"Fair," I repeated, a bittersweet smile playing on my lips as I looked at the purple hair on my twins. "That’s a pretty clinical word to use for your mate, don’t you think?"
Thalor looked down, his fingers tracing the silver scales on Marina’s back. "I know how I came into your life, Arinya. It was a chaotic time."
"Are you talking about when you came to offer me your soul, heart and body? Yes, it was a chaotic time." I said, a light chuckle bubbling in my throat.
"In the end, you accepted me because I lured you," he confessed. "It was not the siren song, but you were drawn to me and I pulled you in even more."
"But it’s not like I accepted you right away for that," I said to him. "In case you forgot, I told you I would accept you after a while. And you proved yourself useful. You proved you could be patient and you proved I had not made a wrong choice for wanting to add you into my family. So why do you think I accepted you without liking you?"
Would anyone accept a person they don’t like? I can’t see myself giving my body or leaving my back to a man who I believe will hurt me.
"I know." He said. "But I am the last of your husbands and the one who holds the least of your affection. That is why I know that if the circumstances had been different, you wouldn’t have chosen to carry my blood so soon. I am grateful for what I have. I do not demand more than what you are willing to give."
He really was a moron, wasn’t he? A beautiful, tragic, overthinking moron.
"You really think you’re just an accident I tolerated?" I asked, my voice dropping to a whisper.
I reached out into the water, my hand catching his jaw, forcing his face up. His skin was smooth and cool, a perfect balance to the furnace raging in my own blood.
The coral crest on my wrist was burning now, a bright, steady heat that poured directly into my system.
"Listen to me," I said, looking straight into his wide, startled violet eyes. "My body doesn’t just take whatever falls into its lap, Thalor. It’s incredibly selective. During the triplets’ pregnancy, I only had Fenric and Damar, but it went out of its way to pull Noah in too because it wanted a third strong, compatible male. It wants what it wants."
I leaned in closer, my thumb lightly brushing against his smooth cheek. "So when you took the pearl and we shared your rut, when my Estrus came in the process, if my body hadn’t wanted you, I would have stopped you. I would have locked you out. But I didn’t. I craved you. I craved your sperm, your touch, your everything. My body genuinely, completely wanted you and wanted to carry your offspring. You aren’t a last resort, and you certainly aren’t an accident I tolerated. Understand?"
Thalor’s breath hitched, his chest heaving under the water. Kaito and Marina paused their splashing, their fierce tiger-gold eyes shifting between the two of us as if sensing the sudden change in the air.
The blue coral anchor on my wrist pulsed with a heavy, radiating warmth, letting me feel the exact moment his deep-seated insecurities began to shatter.
"I love you, Thalor," I murmured, my voice dropping to a fierce, quiet whisper. "Not because you’re a poetic prince, and not just because you gave me these beautiful brats. I love you. If anything ever happened to you, just like when you were poisoned by the red scales, I would completely lose my mind. Got it?"
The bioluminescent light in the pool suddenly flared, turning a brilliant, vibrant shade of sapphire as his pent-up emotions erupted into the water. Thalor didn’t say a word but the last of his strong will you just swallow it all left him exposed and raw.
A single, genuine pearl-like tear slid down his cheek, and fell into the water.
He didn’t care about being proper anymore. Shifting the babies safely to the crook of his left arm, his right hand came up to wrap around the back of my neck. He lunged upward, pulling me down over the stone edge of the pool to meet his lips.
The kiss was desperate, tasting faintly of salt, and an overwhelming, months-long relief.
His lips were cool against my flushed skin, sending a shiver straight down to my toes as my feet kicked lightly in the water. He held me as if he were a drowning man and I was his only shore, pouring every ounce of his silent devotion into the embrace.
"Mama! Fishy!" Lyra’s little voice suddenly bellowed from the doorway, shattering the beautiful, romantic bubble instantly.
I pulled back, laughing and gasping for air, only to see Fenric standing at the entrance. He had Lyra perched proudly on his shoulders, her little tail flicking against his neck, and a very large, dripping sack of fresh silver fish slung over his arm.
"Well," Fenric smirked, his ruby eyes glinting with amusement as he looked at the glowing sapphire pool and Thalor’s completely flushed, tear-stained face. "Damar sent the fish early, but it looks like you already caught exactly what you were looking for."
Thalor quickly cleared his throat, his tail giving a slight, embarrassed splash beneath the surface as he tried to regain his prince-like dignity. But the soft, radiant smile on his lips gave him away entirely.
"Bring them over, Fenric," I laughed, wiping a stray drop of water from my face as I leaned back against the plush fur blankets on the pool edge. "Before my little diva makes me bite you for real."
With the first snow of winter coating the stone battlements outside, the Sovereignty Wing was warmer than it had ever been.