Elucien Week

The day after Winter Solstice was supposed to be like any other for Elain Archeron. She would wake up with the morning glow and go about her day. She would continue to ignore the string tied to her ribs. She would set aside his gift in a bottom drawer, only to marvel at it later when alone at night. She would act like everything was okay within her heart and head as she fought against the bond pulling her towards one Lucien Vanserra.

But this year wasn’t like the morning after the last two winter solstices. This year she woke up in bed with the male she fought so hard against opening up to. Her mate.

Happy.

Carefree.

Other. 

Elain bade Nesta and Feyre farewell, swearing she’d return to visit just as soon as she could. It was selfish and still it was for her. Elain had always been selfish about Lucien and she always would be for the remainder of her life. 

Lucien took her back to the ruined valley, the once swaying grass so alive and lovely now scorched and barren. The lake still glittered beneath the early morning sun, untainted by Graysen’s violence, but little else had escaped his reach. Lucien, dressed in trousers and boots, stared blankly at the cottage he’d built her. The frame of it remained but nothing else. Windows were shattered, the doors kicked in. Her kitchen had been pulled apart furiously and every piece of furniture, every scrap of clothing, had been destroyed in service to Graysen’s rage.

Elain blinked back her tears, running her palm over his forearm. “I’m sorry–”

“This is salvageable,” he interrupted quickly. “I could fix it…if that is still what you want?”

Elain’s legs wobbled. “You could?”

“I would do anything,” Lucien reminded her, as if he hadn’t proven that time and time again. “Rebuilding our home is nothing at all.”

But to Elain, who agreed fervently, it was everything. 

Rebuilding meant every evening Lucien took Elain back to the humans, where she was treated to a front row view of Rhysand, prince of the dragons and king of the humans, try and desperately court her younger sister. She’d thought he’d have good luck after the whole pantless thing but it seemed Feyre was determined to see her own engagement through to another man—a human man—and Rhys’s nightly visits were doing little to dissuade her. 

Cassian, at least, had managed to crack through Nesta’s icy shell. Elain supposed he fared better because he didn’t wear his heart on his sleeve or pin all his hopes for the future on Nesta. Cassian also didn’t come by every evening. He had responsibilities further away in the mountains that kept him for days. Elain always knew when Nesta was worrying about him–she would pace the windows at night, arms wrapped around her body as she imagined the worst. Cassian would arrive, grinning like a fiend and bowing before Nesta like she was queen. Nesta would scoff, demanding he stand but holding open the door for Cassian to come in all the same. 

Elain very much thought Cassain would win Nesta eventually. Maybe after a year of proving he wanted her for more than just the bond he swore was between them. Rhysand, though…Elain knew how stubborn her sister could be. 

She stayed out of it, returning at night exhausted from helping Lucien pry up floorboards or setting doors back into newly constructed frames. Lucien loathed her help, refusing to let her lift anything heavier than a small sack of screws. If he had his way, she’d spend all her time with the humans, watching them watch her with unguarded suspicion. They blamed her for the death and destruction.

If only she’d died like she was supposed to. None of this would have happened.

I heard he fucks her in his dragon form and she likes it.

I wonder if that baby will be born with wings.

They didn’t trust her and Elain didn’t trust them, either. What would they do if Rhysand wasn’t hanging a noose over everyone’s neck? They knew what he was, what his father had been. Tricked into complacency for centuries by the very beings they’d sworn they hated. He wanted integration and perhaps meant to show them, through his own mate, what that kind of life could look like.

Too bad Feyre wasn’t interested. No amount of kind words from Elain could change Feyre’s opinion, though Elain knew better than to push too hard. She’d only drive Feyre further away. Besides, the baby in her body was growing, stretching its limbs as winter began to settle around them. Lucien still let her come with, even when the sun retreated behind moody clouds and a biting wind made Elain’s nose all but frost over. He still walked around shirtless while she was bundled in layer upon layer, trotting after him while asking an endless stream of questions. She just liked the sound of his voice, just wanted him to relax again.

Lucien was always on edge. Too often his eyes flashed that gold, his ears catching some distant sound she couldn’t hear. He’d go taut, waiting for the threat to wreck their new, carefully constructed happiness. No amount of holding him at night and swearing the danger was gone would ever truly pacify him. Not when his eyes so often snagged on her swelling stomach, draining his face of color while he imagined every small thing that might go wrong. 

Elain was grateful when Lucien dragged a bed back up those steps. It was the first piece of furniture they got. She knew he wanted to wait another week to continue furnishing but while Lucien went back down stairs, sweat dripping off his golden scaled body, Elain scrambled to dress the bed in sheets and blankets and pillows before hastily removing her clothing and sliding beneath. Lucien trudged back up, pulling his long hair from his face. He halted when he saw her.

“Not tonight,” he murmured, eyes softening at the sight.

“Yes tonight,” Elain protested. “And every night after. Take off your pants, Lucien.”

He hesitated, a true first. “It’s not ready. Who will feed you–”

“I will survive a late breakfast,” Elain insisted, pulling the corner of the vibrant red blanket as both invitation and to show him what was waiting beneath. Lucien sucked in a soft breath, long fingers tugging at the laces on his pants. She exhaled loudly when he stood before her, his cock hanging between his legs, body fully on display. 

“That’s the man I remember,” she whispered. A faint smile tugged at his lips. It was the first she’d seen in a long time. “I’ve been missing him.”

Lucien stared at the unlit fireplace for a moment, shifting into his massive, scaled form just long enough to ignite it. Elain sucked in a breath, admiring his glinting plating now dancing in the firelight. Russet eyes slid towards her, devoid of his nervous, predatory gold.

He was a man just as soon as she’d blinked.

“I missed him, too,” she whispered, her words laced with her affection. Lucien smiled, joining her in the bed.

“I will feel better when the baby is with us,” he admitted, drawing her against his chest. “All day, I imagine everything that might go wrong. You are both so vulnerable and I am not enough to protect you.”

“We’re safe now,” she told him, nuzzling against his skin. “Can’t you feel it? Even the air feels different. No one is looking for us.”

“I still think…” he gulped down a messy breath of air. “I cannot stop thinking of that day in the valley. Of watching those males walk to the house knowing you were in there. In my dreams I see…I see what they might have done to you. And I wouldn’t have been able to stop them.”

Elain could feel his heart frantic against her cheek. She kissed the skin, letting her tongue linger against the salt of his flesh. 

“We survived, Lucien. Just as we always will. I am not afraid for our family—not anymore.”

“I don’t want you to be,” Lucien said, shifting so she was fully tucked against him, his chin resting atop her head.

“But you intend to shoulder that burden?”

Lucien huffed his response. “Someone must be appropriately afraid—”

“What about joy?” Elain demanded, twisting onto her back and grabbing his wrist to place against her rounded stomach. The baby was kicking furiously, as if she, too, did not agree with her fathers assessment of the situation. Lucien’s eyes went wide, gripping her body ever so tightly.

“You’ve angered your daughter,” Elain added. “She wants her daddy to be happy.”

“That’s the problem,” he whispered, lowering his head to kiss her belly. “I am already far too happy.”

Elain sighed, raking her fingers through his lovely hair. “Lucien, don’t you know? There is no such thing as too much happiness.”

Lucien kept his head low, whispering to the baby, already so alive with a little personality. Elain kept stroking his hair and Lucien offered another kiss. 

 Elain knew she was right.

LUCIEN: 

“Mate,” Lucien huffed, looking up from the cow he’d been slaughtering to see Elain standing just outside the doorway, nose wrinkled with distaste. “Go back inside.”

“I came to offer you dinner,” she told him, hardly bundled for the blanketing snow falling around them. Lucien’s eyes drifted to her swollen midsection and the baby lurking within. Drenched in blood and guts, butchering knife in hand, it was hardly the right time for his cock to wake. Lucien had been trying to leave her alone, to let her get through this time without being subjected to his lust but every time she seemed to become lovelier and every day he wanted to feast on her like she was the meal she was offering him. 

He grunted in acknowledgement, looking down at the animal he was preparing for a future meal. “Give me an hour.”

“I’ll keep it warm,” she promised. His mate. Smiling happily, Elain flounced out of the poor excuse for a barn Lucien had thrown together. Cassian and Rhysand had been providing livestock as repayment for Graysen’s destruction—though Lucien had technically stolen those beasts previously, hardly here or there, all things considered. He couldn’t leave half of it to rot when one cow could get them through the rest of the frigid weather. 

Once inside, Lucien ducked past Elain for the bathtub. He couldn’t very well sit beside her draped in entrails, though it certainly was tempting. Elain had flowers crowning her head again and glowed from whatever magic the baby offered. She was ethereal, so beautiful it made his teeth ache. He worked quickly, ridding himself of the blood and guts from his body before trotting back downstairs, the ends of his hair dripping down his bare back. 

She was still waiting at the little round table between the living room and kitchen, their tiny, makeshift kitchen. Come spring, Lucien intended to open the walls and make it larger, add more bedrooms for all the children he planned to put in her belly. They would need the space, of that Lucien was certain.

Elain’s eyes were dark when they lighted upon him, pushing a bowl of stew across the table towards him with what felt like intentional slowness. “Hungry?” she asked, the wafting scent of her arousal catching him by surprise.

“Ravenous,” he agreed, not talking about the food in front of him at all. Biting her bottom lip, Elain watched him raise the spoon to his lips. He would have given anything for a minute of Rhysand’s powers, if only to know what, exactly, was running through her mind. He had to swallow his grown when she primly crossed one leg over the other, turning to her food.

Lucien was seconds from flinging the food he knew she’d worked hard on to the floor and fucking her up against the table. 

It was hardly the way to treat his fragile, pregnant mate. He forced himself to take a breath but the silence was overwhelming. Elain typically talked, filling him in on her day, the baby, and every little thought she knew he wanted to hear. Instead, Elain merely watched him like he was prey. 

Lucien swallowed, unable to take another bite. “Elain–”

“Yes?” she asked, spoon clattering to the table. Lucien exhaled roughly. He’d meant to ask her what was going on with her but now…

“Why are you dressed?” he growled. If his advances weren’t welcome, she’d tell him with the same fire that so often poured from his throat. Lucien exhaled roughly when she rose to her feet, sweeping her hair to her shoulder.

“I can’t reach,” she whispered. It was Lucien’s turn to stand, dwarfing her frame with his much larger, utterly naked body. Elain’s eyes darted between his legs to his cock, already stiff and aching for her touch. As she turned, the fabric of her dress brushed over the head of him, drawing a shuddering breath. 

“It’s been too long, Lucien,” she told him as he began to tug at her. “You don’t touch me anymore.”

“You are…” he had the sense that if he called her fragile she might yell at him. “Tired.”

She snorted. “Not that tired.”

Lucien lowered his mouth to kiss the side of her neck, still only halfway done. “I am trying to be careful. You are my first pregnant mate. I am not sure how these things are supposed to go.”

“I am not so delicate I can’t handle a little roughhousing,” she teased sweetly, pushing the sleeves of the dress off her shoulders when she felt that last lace undone. All at once, Elain was utterly bare and Lucien, stricken with need, knew there was no way he’d get her up the steps to lay her among the pillows. He was going to fuck her on the table if they were lucky and the floor if they were not. 

“Oh?” he whispered as she turned around, palms pressed against his pectorals. Elain slid them down, down, down, until her clever little fingers were combing through the expanse of copper hair trailing towards his cock. Lucien groaned when she gripped him, stroking with firm, rough fingers. 

“I thought the monster would have his way regardless of how I felt about it,” Elain continued, letting him back her closer to the table. Lucien bared his teeth.

“Is that what my mate wants? The vicious, fire breathing monster?”

“Yes,” she whispered softly.

“The male that jealously guards the things that belong to him,” Lucien continued, hefting her up and sweeping their dishes to the floor. Elain didn’t notice how the remnants splattered against her immaculate floor and Lucien vowed, even as he ran his hands up her naked form to cup her swollen breasts, that he would clean it all up after she fell asleep. 

Her mouth brushed over his own, fingers against the back of his neck to draw him closer. “Yes,” she whispered. Lucien couldn’t help himself, indulging in what he swore would just be one kiss before he sank between her thighs. Kissing was something Lucien had never stopped doing and yet somehow that first taste always felt new and exciting to him. 

He couldn’t fuck his perfect, beautiful mate on the table no matter how insistent his cock was. He could lift her up and carry her, legs wrapped around his naked body so her wet cunt slid against his overheated skin. Lucien groaned into her sweet smelling hair, almost tripping up the slick stairs. Stairs he’d built and Elain had insisted they needed a runner in order to prevent someone from falling. He’d puffed out his chest, declaring she would merely need to be careful. He was agile. He was athletic. He had nearly sent them both crashing to the floor in his haste.

“Floor runner,” Elain whispered against his mouth. She wasn’t about to let this moment go.

“That’s enough from you,” Lucien growled, reaching the top of the stairs, his mate still kissing behind his ear. He’d have to ask Nesta to pick one out for him and leave it on the porch. Elain’s sisters were useful that way—Lucien didn’t have to steal as often given Nesta and Feyre were willing to offer up harder to get things without complaint. 

Lucien laid her atop the bed, a fire crackling merrily in the heart across the room. He was struck by how normal it all felt. Like nothing had happened at all. Lucien didn’t know what to make of that, staring down at her wiggling, naked form. Her expression softened.

“Come here,” she whispered. Lucien stumbled again, this time on the very rug laid against the floor meant to prevent such things. He huffed and Elain laughed, scrambling back so when Lucien laid against the pillows, she was kneeling beside him. He frowned when she climbed over him, settling between his legs.

“Not tonight,” misunderstanding what she meant to do. Elain ran her hands up his skin, fingers mapping the muscles beneath. 

“I always forget how lovely you are,” she whispered, those same hands sliding over his thighs. He understood, then, as she inched closer, that Elain didn’t mean to put him in her mouth but to slide him into her body while he remained beneath her. Lucien welcomed the touch, arching softly when she reached his stomach. The heat between her legs all but burned the skin of his cock, the wetness coating him. Lucien’s legs shook, spreading while he waited. Elain was in no rush, eyes still studying him even as she reached beneath her to line them together. 

“My mate thinks I’m beautiful,” he whispered, still in awe she wanted anything to do with him at all. He suspected she heard the slant of his thoughts given the teasing smile on her face. Elain poked him softly.

“My mate is beautiful,” she insisted. There was no room to argue, not when she sank slowly against him, the blunt edges of her nails curling into her body as she gripped. Head thrown back, breath coming in soft, puffing gasps, Lucien thought she’d never been as perfect as she was in that moment.

“That’s good,” she breathed, holding still as she readjusted to his size. Lucien’s heart pounded wildly, forcing himself not to thrust into her like a rabid animal. She wanted to be in control and he wanted to let her. If she meant to torture him, Lucien was happy to suffer. 

She rolled her hips, not pulling out of him the way he was so accustomed to but dragging her own tightness around him. Lucien’s responding groan ripped from his throat without meaning to, earning a delighted smile from Elain above him.

“Do you like that, Lucien?”

“Yes,” he gasped, reaching for her hips. “Do it again.”

Digging her fingers tighter against his chest, Elain moved again, tightening as she did. Her breathy moan mingled with his own. She leaned forward, continuing her steady grinding until Lucien felt mindless with need. Anything she did would have felt good and Lucien knew it, and yet seeing his pregnant mate riding him, eyes rolling in her skull, was practically too much. He was already planning that second child, already imagining all the ways he might have her, the positions he’d put her in. 

He held her steady, pleased beyond words when she was all but flat against him, her cunt clenched tight around him as she rode him into madness. Her lips pressed against his own, allowing Lucien the pleasure of running a hand up her spine, tangling it in her hair so he could keep her pinned exactly the way he wanted. Mouth slanted, tongue delving against his own while she writhed and clenched and all but dripped her arousal against his aching thighs. 

She came against his lips. Lucien swallowed her panting cries greedily, holding her rolling hips as she urged him higher, up towards that familiar incline before he plunged off, too. He couldn’t help himself, arching so violently he felt as if he’d been pulled by invisible strings. Every inch of him was taut, locked while he pumped his release into her tight cunt.

Even as he came back, falling limp beneath her, Lucien could not stop kissing. Over and over, one sliding into the next as he waited for her to catch her breath so he could have her again. She understood what he was doing, why he hadn’t let her pull off of him and collapse to the sheets beneath. 

He was gentle, reversing their position. Pushing tendrils of hair off her face, Lucien peered down at her. Elain reared up, kissing his cheek impulsively, still smiling. 

“I love you,” he murmured, unable to stop himself. 

She held him close.

“I love you, too.”

ELAIN:

Elain was exhausted. No one had ever explained just how difficult it was to carry new life at the very end. The baby seemed to exist directly against her cervix and every time she stood that weight flooded between her legs, making her think she was one walk away from accidentally birthing the baby on the floor.

Lucien had become increasingly anxious. All the touching—at least, with his cock—had stopped again in favor of being endlessly bundled in blankets and kissed everywhere but where she wanted him. She was trying to be patient given how her frustration often made her snappish. Lucien weathered it, wide eyed and nervous like he expected her to just take off one day and never return.

That was, of course, the other problem. Winter was giving way to spring, ticking down the inevitable birth of the baby. He wanted her to go back to the humans and have their child, if only to keep her under the watchful eye of her sisters and others who knew how baby’s ought to be born. Elain trusted her sisters implicitly and did not want to be helpless beneath a doctors scalpel if anything went wrong. She didn’t trust a human man not to harm their baby or worse, remove her ability to ever give Lucien another child again.

He’d still love her, but Elain would have forever grieved that loss. She knew he was planning for more, if his endless construction wasn’t proof of the family he one day hoped to have. She kept putting him off but the urge to wander into the forest was all but strangling her, prompting Elain each morning to fill a basket with food and a blanket, put on her best walking shoes, and begin walking down the valley. 

She never got far. She was slow, given she was hefting around what she was starting to worry was a thirty pound baby. Her hips ached and she had to pause every twenty feet to catch her breath. Lucien also was quick to realize she was wandering around and, if she escaped his notice long enough, would glide overhead as the beast, tongue flickering against his snout with disapproval.

Other times he merely chased after her, wondering what she was doing and if he could join. How did she explain the instinct to hide herself in the woods? That the baby was coming and all Elain wanted was to pace in a circle and build a nest to hide away in? Or worse even, was her growing suspicion that he had somehow made her this way, either from the bond acceptance or the child that lived within her. After all, Elain had seen many pregnant women in the human villages and they seemed quite content to remain among civilization. 

Spring showers gave way to blooming warmth and while Elain suffered silently, the valley too was reborn. The once scorched, ruined ground was peppered with new grass that shot skyward under the sun's coaxing gaze. Pretty, multicolored flowers returned with the bees, littered about until Elain could forget Graysen had ever stood in this beautiful place at all. She could forget Graysen had existed entirely and too often she did. How she met Lucien, the circumstances that brought her to her mountainside cottage were a mere blur in her memories. Perhaps she’d merely met him during a stroll in the woods and have been struck instantly by his beauty.

Love at first sight.

She thought she might tell their children that, anyway. Was it not the truth, in a twisted sort of fashion? Lucien, a terrible, violent beast, had lain himself before her. Wounded and bleeding, she might have left him there until it festered and he died and yet that soft tugging had prompted her to act.

Elain liked to think it was love. 

That was the way of things, she supposed. Violence was blanketed in soft grass, so easily destroyed if someone had half a mind. Unconcerned with the beast lurking just above, the world cheerfully announced it would continue its optimistic slant towards peace and beauty and if that meant on occasion it got hurt in pursuit of those things, well…perhaps that was just a risk worth taking. 

Elain certainly thought so. It was a life worth protecting, at any rate. Elain woke, aching and exhausted like she always did to a cheerful morning that felt out of place, given the ache in her bones. Lucien was already gone and she wondered what she might say to convince him to let her wake up wrapped around him. Lucien was so warm, it was like having a heater pressed to her skin. Prolonged contact relieved some of the hurt in her body, at any rate.

He was trying to finish his expansion before the baby arrived which meant Lucien worked sunup to sundown without stopping. Elain kicked off the blankets for the bath she knew was waiting. She made herself breakfast before packing herself up again. This time, she swore. This time she’d get to the woods.

Lucien didn’t notice her slip out though she certainly saw him. Shirtless in his work

pants, vambraces on his forearms to keep himself from getting too cut up, hair pulled off his golden face gleaming with sweat. She stuck around a moment longer, he’d scent her arousal and take her right back up to bed. 

She took off, giving in to the instinct like she did every morning. She needed to hide, could feel that frantic pull in her chest. The house was too unguarded. Anyone would find her there. She wanted to burrow underground, to hide beneath the earth, watching the darkness with careful eyes. 

It took Elain all morning to reach the lake in the middle of the valley. Panting and exhausted, she all but collapsed to the ground for a drink and something to eat. Hand resting on the large curve of her stomach, Elain wondered if she’d be able to get back up. She’d definitely had to roll to her side like a turtle and push off her hands and knees. 

She gave herself a too-long break, studying the clouds passing in the sky overhead. She didn’t want to move despite the ache that begged her to. Was this, spread against a nice, red checkered blanket within the watchful distance of her fearsome mate, not enough?

Apparently not. Eventually that instinct reared its ugly head, reaching a fever pitch of need. Her blood seemed to thrum in time—hide, hide, hide—and when Elain stood on trembling, wobbly legs, she understood why it was particularly insistent that day. Fluid trickled down her leg from beneath her skirt, dripping to the grass beneath. 

Too late, Elain knew that persistent ache wasn’t asking her to walk away, but urging her to move because it was time. The once dull throb had sharpened, cresting through her like a gentle wave promising much, much more. That first real taste of what was coming left her breathless with fear. 

Elain turned her head to the cottage where Lucien lurked. He could be with her in moments. She needed him. Elain panted, falling back to her knees despite how hard she’d work to stand. Fingers curling in the earth, she forced herself to breathe through another cresting wave of pain. Her stomach tightened, eliciting a soft groan from Elain’s lips.

She heard Lucien before she saw him. That sound of running feet, of his hands on her face.

“What’s happening?” he asked, eyes searching her own. “I smell blood.”

Was that what had drawn him down? Elain reached for his bare shoulder, digging her nails into his flesh to get her through another contraction.

“It’s time,” she breathed. Lucien tried to hoist her up but Elain was not moving.

Just like that first time, Elain was determined she would have this baby outdoors, come hell or high water. Lucien’s eyes shifted to gold, skin rippling and she could see how hard he was trying not to shift and track for predators. 

“Please,” he whispered as she shook her head back and forth. “Please let me take you inside.”

Elain let him kiss her cheek.

“Right here,” she told him. “Just like this.”

Lucien took a steadying breath. She waited for him to argue.

“Right here,” he agreed, reaching for her hand. “Just like this.” LUCIEN: 

Had Lucien ever hoped for a big family? Watching Elain bring the little infant now bundled against her body had changed him fundamentally as a creature. Elain, who had remained utterly in control despite the way her face contorted with pain, her nails digging so hard against his body that she’d drawn blood. The whole valley was bathed in it and Lucien was just itching to get back out there and clean it all up before some terrible predator came sniffing around. He knew she didn’t want him to set anymore grass on fire and yet Lucien wasn’t about to let it linger. Not when she’d insisted she have their baby on that blanket. 

He couldn’t pretend he wasn’t pleased, though. Elain was back in their bed, face peaceful as she slept while the sun set behind them. The moment that curly head of red hair entered the world, Elain had become a docile creature again, no longer obsessed with her wild wandering. Lucien supposed he should have realized she was looking for a place to build a nest. It was the sort of thing he might have done and hadn’t considered there was some wildness to his mate beneath her careful civility. 

Padding across the room, Lucien reached for that pink little blanket to look at the child sleeping within. Soft, golden brown skin already glowed with whatever magic he was certain lurked in her veins. Petal pink lips puckered into a little frown, her eyes and button nose scrunched with sleep. He supposed being born was just as difficult as birthing someone and both his new daughter—baby Ivy—and his mate were exhausted.

Only Lucien was keyed up and overwhelmed. He wanted to bounce around, to trumpet his success all over the land. Child, he had a child!

And not just any child. Ivy, wide-eyed and wailing, had a good set of lungs on her for a hybrid dragon. Her eyes had been the most peculiar shade of blue though Elain had assured him that all babies started with blue eyes and Ivy was likely to end up with his russet brown. Lucien hoped not. In every imagining, he’d pictured a little Elain. This child was all him, evidenced by her breaking free of Elain’s tight swaddle, little fist flying and catching him upside the jaw.

“That’s enough of that,” he murmured, unable to keep himself from kissing that chubby little cheek. He couldn’t help himself, drawn to her soft scent. Lucien ran a finger over her, so delicately scaled they seemed almost iridescent in the fading daylight. 

“I can hear the grinding in your head,” Elain whispered, one eye opening to look at him. “Come get in bed.”

He set Ivy in the little rocking bassinet just beside the bed, close enough Elain could scoop her out if she so wished. For tonight, Lucien wouldn’t complain but tomorrow he fully intended to work out a schedule in which he, too, got to wake up with the wailing, demanding creature they were both so infatuated with. 

“I think I need at least six months before we think about doing that again,” she whispered when he pulled her against his body. Nestled against him, Lucien pressed a kiss into her scalp.

“One is more than enough,” he assured her, though that primal part of him very much liked the thought of his mate pregnant again. It spoke to some innate virility, some instinctual urge to spread out his line for as long as he could.

“You have a very long life ahead of you,” Lucien murmured. That was true. Her life would be exactly as long as his own. Time would stretch across centuries before they finally ground to dust and Lucien was very much looking forward to each moment of it. “Take six years before you ask for another.”

“I think there is something sweet about siblings close in age,” Elain protested. Lucien barely remembered his own brothers anymore, though he seemed to think they did an awful lot of fighting. She cherished her sisters and Lucien supposed that colored her decisions. Besides, what did forever mean to a human? Elain had been bred to have children young.

It would all take time. 

“I am in no rush,” he promised. 

“Even if next time I want to have the baby by the lake again?”

Lucien swallowed the urge to shift and prowl. He knew she’d been annoyed when he’d done that in the wake of realizing she was pregnant. When he opened his eyes, he could see her grin, her teasing lips. 

“A little warning, perhaps,” was the most chiding Lucien could offer. “I would have helped you with your nest.”

“I didn’t know,” she said with a sigh. “The ladies keep secrets.”

“Perhaps human females do not feel the urge like you do.” After all, Lucien just barely considered her to be human any longer. Not with that ribbon of gold around her neck or the scaled baby that had just left her body. 

“Or maybe they are not allowed to,” she murmured pensively. “I have never truly thought of what that life might have been like for me.” Lucien settled himself beside her, stroking hair off her forehead. Elain breathed a soft sigh. 

“They keep us so small and I wonder if I was ever allowed to truly feel before they put those manacles on my wrist. I know you were always meant to be the prison but sometimes…sometimes I think my whole life before that tower was the prison and when they chose me, they accidentally set me free.”

Lucien’s heart threatened to come out of his chest. Loving him was one thing. Lucien could live his life on that alone. But to hear his mate say he’d freed her of a life she’d been miserable in was wholly another. That had she ever been given a true choice to go back, Elain would still fight and kick and scream just as she’d done when Graysen arrived. 

He kissed her softly. “Are you suggesting I have given you wings.”

She poked him in the throat. “Don’t be so sentimental, Lucien. I was trying to pay you a compliment.”

“I know what you were trying to do,” he murmured, sinking down for another kiss. “You have done enough today. Do not stroke my ego as well. Get some sleep and I will handle everything else.”

He started to get up but Elain reached for him, fingers curling along his bicep. “Stay.”

It was enough to collapse him to the bed, to go back to holding her soft body against his own. Lucien’s mate, the lovely Elain he’d once found chained up in a tower, trembling and terrified. Fierce enough to pull a spear out of his gut and to come for him when anyone else might have left him to his fate with Graysen and yet soft enough her hands could not bear to exact revenge on the very male that had never once considered sparing her. 

Lucien sent his silent gratitude towards the sky for this life, small and sweet as it was. He would have done anything for it. Would have ignited the skies, the seas, the very ground just beyond Elain’s feet. 

Having her was everything. 

“What are you thinking about, my lady?”

His body was so close to hers, curled around her as she laid back under the canopy of flowers. His other arm was draped above her, bent at the elbow as idle fingers toyed with splayed curls.

Her eyes fluttered open, crinkling in the corners with the growing of a smile. Lucien stared at her like she was the last flower before the cold snap of autumn. The sun softened the sharp shadows cast along the rough scar covering half his face. Not hiding it, but glorifying it.

“The future. The past.” Her voice was lilted, ringing through her mind like a bell.

Elain didn’t look away as an amused grin spread across those full lips. It was conspiratorial, like they shared some important secret. Her heart beat wildly in her chest as he drew his face near. The mingling of their cinnamon and honeyed scents molting her to her core. He watched her intently with those mismatched eyes, as if he could see every fiber of her being pulled toward him. With every fraction of a inch that he crossed, her yearning for him grew.

But worst of all was the blurry line she walked between reality and prophecy. One moment, she was sipping her tea at the breakfast table, and the next she was standing in a busy marketplace, uncertain which was the illusion until she was vaulted back into her physical body, blinking as her heart settled and her vision returned.

“Elain?”

Feyre leaned over the table, palms pressed into the dark wood, hovering as close to Elain as the barrier would allow. From the thin line forming between Feyre’s brows, Elain had the impression this was not the first time Feyre had called for her.

“Yes?” Elain said, straightening her back and lifting her teacup as if nothing had happened.

Feyre’s shoulders slackened, and she drew back into her seat with a small sigh of relief. But Elain knew that after the concerned sister, came the curious High Lady. She watched, face still ducked into her teacup, as Feyre pressed her lips together, thinking so loudly she might as well have used her magic to project her thoughts. Not that it mattered, not when her questions were obvious, and already evident in the way those blue-grey eyes searched her face.

Tea sloshed against Elain’s lips, uncontrolled, inelegant. Her hand was shaking. Though the vision had been mild, even pleasant, compared to others, that flash of red hair had unnerved her. The way it always did.

She set the teacup down, ignoring how it rattled against the saucer. How Feyre flinched.

“Lucien’s on his way,” Elain said, fighting to keep her voice neutral.

A knock sounded at the door, cutting off Feyre’s response. Elain patted her lip with the napkin, skin tingling from the too-hot liquid, and stood up from her chair. “Before you answer, would you mind taking me to the House of Wind?”

“You’re not even going to say hi?”

There was an accusation in that question. Subtle, even a little gentle, but an accusation nonetheless. Elain crossed her arms, as if doing so could deflect from her sister’s judgment. She knew what Feyre wanted—for Elain to stay, to make nice with Lucien and ask him about his latest trip to the mortal lands. She wanted Elain to get to know the male she was eternally bonded to so that they might one day find the happiness that Feyre and Rhysand found in each other. Even Nesta seemed to be encouraging it these days.

“He doesn’t need to know I was here,” Elain said. “Besides, he’s come to see you.”

Feyre raised a brow. If there was sharpness in those words, Elain hadn’t meant them. Or maybe she had. She was frustrated that her sisters had already made up their minds about what was best for her, and that despite the agency she craved, she couldn’t even flee to the House of Wind without Feyre’s help.

They stared at each other for a long moment, a clash of stubbornness that was sometimes the only thing that connected them.

“Fine,” Feyre said, coming around the table and reaching out her hand. “But you should try talking to him one of these days, Elain. He’s a good male.”

He was a good male. Elain knew that perfectly well. And before the room was swallowed into darkness, she found her eyes drifting towards the entryway, listening to the heartbeat that drifted to her through the wooden door.

It followed her all the way to the House of Wind.

And in her sleep that night, the beating stopped.

Elain sat up in bed, clutching her chest. Beneath her clammy skin, she could feel her own heart thundering beneath her fingers. But its golden echo, the one she felt like a string around her rib, plucked day and night by a tireless musician… It had fallen silent.

A dream, she thought. A vision. Any moment now, she’d blink and find herself sitting in the library, wondering at the Cauldron’s strange meaning. But as she laid on her back and watched a dark cloud slowly creep across the starry sky, she felt the seconds prying for her attention with growing urgency. And suddenly she couldn’t breath as a terrible, gnawing panic seized her throat. The next thing she knew, she was rushing through the corridors of the House of Wind, hair and nightgown flowing behind her.

He answered the door on the first knock. She knew he wouldn’t be sleeping, even at this hour.

“Elain?” Azriel asked, hazel eyes sweeping over her, assessing if her panic was the result of any injury on her person. “What’s wrong?”

Ordinarily, she might have taken the time to be embarrassed by her state of undress. But all she could hear was the silence in her mind. The vast, roaring emptiness that was usually occupied by life and light.

Elain took a moment to compose herself, trying to swallow past the sickening feeling in her gut, but the words all escaped in a rush regardless of her efforts. “Can you take me down?”

“What?”

“Downstairs,” she clarified. “To the Rainbow.”

His gaze darted to the ground. To her bare feet. “Dressed like that?”

“Please,” was all she said.

Azriel didn’t press any further. He simply led her to the nearest balcony and did precisely as she asked, hesitating only once they landed in the empty marketplace, and she shivered when he set her down on the cobblestone. He removed his jacket, and the evening was cold enough that Elain didn’t object when he placed it over her shoulders.

But she did shake her head as he said, “Whatever you’re doing, let me come with you. To make sure you’re safe.”

“I’ll be fine,” she said, pulling the jacket closer when she noticed the way his eyes wandered to her neckline. Maybe he was concerned by the attention her attire would attract, a fear she might have shared if Lucien’s apartment wasn’t just across the street. And she had a feeling that regardless of what she said to Azriel, he’d be lingering to ensure nothing happened to her.

“I’ll stay here, then” Azriel said. “So that I can bring you back up when you’re ready.”

Sensing that was the most she could convince Azriel to stay out of it, and not wanting to waste any more time arguing, Elain nodded and dashed off toward Lucien’s apartment. A place she’d never visited before, though she’d seen it in enough visions to recognize the stepping stones of the front garden as if she’d been the one to arrange them.

Of all the times she’d thought about coming here, of bracing her hand around the iron knocker and letting fall to the front door, she’d never imagined it would be the middle of the night. And that the knocker would bounce once, twice, until it vibrated into stillness. No shuffle on the other side, no footsteps. No answer at all.

In all her imaginings, she’d certainly never thought that she would need to sneak into his back garden and mount the trellis to his balcony, battling against the climbing roses that snagged at her dressing gown. She hissed as more than a few scraped against her legs, as if the garden were fighting back against its intruder.

“Lucien?” She called as she came level with his balcony. Leaning over, she could see no light in his room, and it occurred to her that she could be reading too much into the quiet. He could just be sleeping, and maybe his heartbeat quieted when he slept and she’d simply never noticed. This was her last chance to turn away without looking like a lunatic.

Lucien? She tried, searching internally for the kernel of light that lived inside her, warm and lovely and achingly absent. There was no response. No stirrings at all on the other side of their muted bond. She grasped, helplessly, for something to pull, for the golden thread he’d once tugged all those years ago. When she found nothing, she pulled herself onto his balcony and yanked on the handle to his bedroom.

Locked.

Through the glass, she could see his red hair against the pillows. His face was turned toward her, eyes shut, expression so soft and unguarded she barely recognized him. Elain stilled for a minute, the ache in her chest growing tenfold as she admired the sight of Lucien polished in moonlight.

She rapped her knuckles against the glass. First, with all of the bashfulness of someone who expected his eyes to snap open, where she would need to explain what she was doing on his balcony, undressed and bloodied. Then, with increasing urgency as his eyes remained shut, oblivious to her panicked fists slamming against the glass door not a meter away.

If she’d let Azriel come with, he would have known what to do. And perhaps he would have come up with a far less destructive solution than Elain, who turned to examine the items Lucien kept on his balcony and found a small potted plant that she immediately hurled towards the door. Any faerie would have woken to the sound of the shattering glass. Even one having a particularly nice dream.

His neighbors might even be awake now, coming to their windows to watch Elain push her arm through the jagged hole and unlock the door from the inside. Maybe tomorrow there’d be news articles about Velaris’s new, sloppy midnight burglar. As long as tomorrow’s news was about her, and not the deceased son of Autumn, she didn’t care.

She didn’t care even as the glass cut into her feet, not as Lucien remained unresponsive to it all. Unaware of his intruder. Unaware that his mate was bleeding and panicked and desperate. It was all wrong. Something was horribly, horribly wrong.

“Lucien?” She called, his name strangled in her throat.

In her mortal life, she might have cared about dripping blood onto his sheets, or how she was climbing into a male’s bed in only her night gown. But now she was High Fae and this was her mate—her mate. And all that mattered was getting to him.

Elain cupped his face, nearly sobbing when she felt that it was warm to the touch. Warm. Not claimed by death—not yet. And his lips were parted, expelling air with every rise and fall of his chest. Alive, alive, alive.

Despite the evidence, when Elain pressed her fingers to the pulsepoint on his neck, she was surprised to find a heartbeat as familiar as her own. Steady, healthy, yet still absent from where it once resided in her mind. And he still wasn't awake.

Was it magic? Some kind of spell, or poison? Without thinking, she ripped the bedcovers from his body to see if there was some ailment she was missing. A bite wound, or an arrow puncture, or…. Lucien’s uninjured, perfectly healthy, and obscenely muscular naked body.

Elain yelped, immediately covering him back up. “I’m so sorry,” she said, though he couldn’t hear and was unaware of the violation she’d just committed.

It was then that her eyes wandered toward his bedside table, bearing all the things she would expect from Lucien: a pile of books with loose papers atop them, a leatherbound journal, a dagger with a jeweled hilt, and… a small, empty vial labeled sleeping tonic.

She recalled the vision she’d had that morning, of Lucien navigating his way through the busy marketplace. How he’d paused before a tonic shop, intrigued by their wares. She hadn’t thought anything of it, besides that it meant Lucien had returned to the city. And now she examined the glass shards littering his bedroom floor, the soil spilling out of the broken plant pot, the blood on the floor, the sheets—oh god, it was on his face, too.

“Elain?”

She turned her head, finding Azriel standing on the balcony, looking far more concerned for the state she was in than the unconscious male beneath her.

“Is everything okay?” he prompted.

What did she even say, to answer for all of the reckless, impulsive things she’d done this evening?

All she could do was point to the vial and croak, “The tonic he bought at the shop… will it wear off?”

Azriel squinted through the glass to read the label, then huffed a laugh under his breath, as if he was familiar. “Those tonics will leave you all but dead to the world. The last time I took one, I woke up with a mustache painted on my face.”

That certainly sounded like something his friends would do. Elain couldn’t bring herself to laugh. “So he’ll be okay?”

“He’ll be fine. I can’t say the same for his balcony door, though.”

Elain’s cheeks burned. “Will you take me back? And forget this ever happened?”

The shadowsinger watched her carefully. “Of course. It can be our secret.”

Azriel kept a lot of those. She trusted he would keep this one, at least from Lucien, but even so she couldn’t find it in herself to meet his eyes as he stepped into Lucien’s apartment and lifted Elain from her mate’s bed. They flew back to the house in silence, the stinging in her feet becoming more and more intrusive as her adrenaline wore off.

“Let me take you to the infirmary,” he said once they landed on one of the many verandas.

“No.”

“Elain—”

“No.” She didn’t mean to snap. In truth, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d use that tone with anyone. She took a deep breath, reminding herself that Azriel was only trying to help. That he’d been indulging her foolish impulses all evening, expecting nothing in return. “Just take me back to my room, please. I can deal with it.”

Azriel’s jaw tightened. He said nothing, but he did as she asked.

Only once he left, and she heard his door shut down the hall, did she release her hold on the tears that she’d been repressing from the moment she realized Lucien was okay. Picking the leftover pieces of glass from her feet was preferable to anguishing over the fool she made of herself tonight, though she managed to do both.

What had gotten into her? She’d always felt a measure of the instincts that came with the bond. The pull, the wanting, the need to claim and protect. But they had always been passive, easily brushed aside. What she’d felt tonight had gripped her with such violence that she’d been blinded to everything else, any sense of reason or reservation. What would Lucien think when he woke in the morning and saw that someone had broken into his home? And how would she be able to look him in the eyes, now that his naked form was imprinted in her mind, lingering no matter how she tried to banish it. It was wrong. It was stolen. It was… making the ache feel raw again.

Worst of all, despite Azriel’s assurance that Lucien was unharmed by the tonic, she found she couldn’t go to sleep while his side of the bond remained a torment of nothingness. She turned over restlessly throughout the night, replaying it all in her head, torturing herself with the anxious thought that maybe Azriel was wrong. Maybe the tonic wouldn’t wear off, and her mate was in danger. She should have stayed, at least until she knew he was okay.

Lucien would have stayed.

That thought, more than anything, kept her awake. Kept her debating all night whether she should face the ten thousand steps just to break into his house again. It was only the cuts on her feet, and her own shame at explaining to Lucien how much she overreacted, that kept her in bed, turning restlessly.

It wasn't until the sun came up that the familiar metronome of his heartbeat returned.