Chapter 14: Tasting the Wounds
757 Words
They didn’t return to the valley camp.
Kael was too broken, and Luna was too angry to face the whispers.
So they went deeper into the woods, past the fallen stone rings and shattered runes, to a place where even wolves dared not sleep.
An abandoned den carved into a hillside, buried beneath moss and roots.
It was cold, dark, and still stinking faintly of old blood.
Perfect.
Kael collapsed the moment they crossed the threshold.
Luna caught him, barely.
She eased him down to the earthen floor, wincing at the deep gash across his ribs, the stab wound near his shoulder, and the burns etched by magical restraint.
He was burning up.
Still, he smirked.
“You should see the other guy.”
“You shouldn’t be talking at all.”
“I didn’t want to let him touch you.”
Luna sat beside him, breathing unevenly.
“You took the blow meant for me.”
“I’d take a thousand.”
She looked down at her bloodied hands. “Don’t say that.”
“I mean it.”
“You don’t get to die for me, Kael.”
He reached up weakly and touched her cheek.
“I already did. In another life.”
She bit her lip.
Then she stood, ripping open the satchel she’d carried since the battle.
There were herbs. Poultices. Cloth. Alcohol.
She began cleaning his wounds in silence.
His breath hitched when she pressed the rib cut.
She looked at him sharply. “Painful?”
“No.”
His voice was low.
“You’re touching me, Luna.”
She paused.
And in that pause, the air shifted.
The silence between them thickened—damp, intimate, volatile.
Kael’s skin glistened with sweat.
His shirt was long gone.
She could see every ripple of muscle, every bruise, every old scar. One across his collarbone. Another near his hip.
She ran her fingers along the fresh one over his chest.
“I hate this one,” she whispered.
“I’ll keep it.”
“I said I hate it.”
He smiled. “Then I’ll hate it too.”
Her hand trembled.
She traced the wound down his ribs.
His breath faltered.
“Luna…”
She shook her head.
“No talking.”
She lowered her mouth to his chest and kissed along the edge of the wound.
He hissed.
Not from pain.
From restraint.
She moved to his shoulder, kissing the burn from the restraint run.
Then to his collarbone, her lips grazing the skin just below the spot where his mark would go, if she ever bit him.
He groaned softly.
“Are you healing me,” he rasped, “or killing me?”
“I don’t know.”
She straddled his hips.
“I just know I need to touch you until the war stops shaking inside me.”
She took off her shirt.
Tossed it aside.
Her body was covered in blood, ash, bruises. And yet when she looked at him, she saw desire flicker through the pain.
He reached for her.
She let him.
His hands slid along her thighs, up her hips, trembling.
Her body ached, not just from battle, but from missing him.
She lowered herself onto him slowly—no teasing, no words—just heat and pressure and a broken gasp from both of them.
Their hands locked.
Their foreheads touched.
It wasn’t frantic.
It was slow.
Every thrust a balm.
Every moan a stitch pulling them back together.
He kissed her neck.
She bit his lip.
He ran a thumb over her breast.
She cried out against his mouth when she came, clenched around him, shaking, full.
He followed with a groan so low it trembled her spine.
After, she lay on his chest, her heart thudding.
He stroked her hair.
She kissed the scar again.
Neither said “I love you.”
But it was in the way they breathed.
The way their bodies refused to separate.
Later, as the fire crackled low, Kael spoke into the dark.
“My father’s not done.”
“I know.”
“He’ll come harder next time.”
“So will we.”
He turned his face to hers.
“And if I lose control?”
She looked into his eyes—gold, still glowing in the dark.
“Then I’ll find you again.”
Outside the den, wolves howled in the distance.
But they didn’t rise.
Not tonight.
Tonight, they licked their wounds.
And loved each other like it might be the last time.
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