The Fallen Princess: Unbound

Chapter Eighteen

The morning sun was just brushing the edges of the bed when Zaria woke. For a few heartbeats she lay still, suspended in that soft nowhere between sleep and waking, aware first of warmth, then of weight.

The solid line of Callen’s body curved around hers, his arm heavy over her waist, his breath slow against the back of her neck. She shifted carefully, rolling in his hold until she could look up at him.

He was already half awake, lashes low, expression unguarded in a way the rest of the world rarely got to see. Zaria lifted her hand and traced the line of his jaw, slow and idle. From the sharp angle there, to the softer hollow beneath his ear, down the long column of his throat.

He caught her hand before she could drift lower. Callen brought her wrist to his mouth and pressed a kiss to the inside, right over the banded mark that still circled her skin. The sap-ink stain from the twisted ancient forest. From Koen’s homeland.

“This mark.” His voice came rough with sleep, eyes half closed as he studied it. “Will it fade?” Zaria watched his thumb brush the edge of it, the way his jaw flexed like he wanted to erase it with his touch. “I don’t know,” she murmured. “Maeryn didn’t say.”

He exhaled quietly, then turned his head and pressed her palm flat to his cheek, covering it with his own hand as if he could claim it that way instead. He leaned into her touch, eyes falling fully shut now, the tension around his mouth easing.

“What do you have planned today?” he asked, words rumbling against her fingers. “The book,” Zaria answered. “I’m working on it with Koen.” The breath he let out wasn’t relief. It was a sigh of frustration wrapped in resignation. “I don’t like him.”

Zaria huffed a quiet laugh. “You don’t like most people.” “I tolerate most people,” he corrected, eyes opening again, gold clearer now. “I dislike him. There’s a difference.” She opened her mouth, then closed it when he moved.

Callen leaned in, mouth finding the sensitive place just beneath her ear as if he’d grown tired of talking and decided to make his point a different way. His lips lingered there—slow, deliberate—heat and possession and something almost gentle before his teeth grazed lightly, enough to send a shiver down her spine.

Zaria tilted her head, giving him better access on purpose. That earned her another kiss, deeper this time. Warmer. When he pulled back, she could feel the faint sting he’d left behind like a secret pressed into her skin.

His hand slid over her collarbone, thumb tracing the delicate line there before drifting lower, over the curve of her breast. He touched her like he wasn’t reacquainting himself with a body that had carried and birthed a child, rather like he’d never stopped knowing every inch of it.

Over the softness she still wasn’t used to, the changes she catalogued in private and tried not to judge. He handled all of it like proof. Proof she had lived through the pain. Proof they had loved. His palm skimmed her stomach and lingered, thumb stroking once as if he could feel the echo of what they’d made together there.

Zaria’s breath hitched. “Callen…” His name left her on an exhale she didn’t quite control. He looked at her then, really looked. Eyes darkening, focus sharpening as the teasing fell away.

The shift was familiar to her now; the moment when the prince and commander, disappeared, and the man who belonged only to her surfaced.

“We don’t have time,” she managed, the protest thin and not even a little convincing. A low sound rumbled in his chest, half laugh, half warning. “We always have time.”

He kissed her again, unhurried, coaxing rather than demanding, until the rest of the room blurred. His hand moved between her legs. knowing exactly where to linger, where to soothe, where to press just enough to unravel her.

His hands were sure and maddeningly patient, and then his fingers slipped inside her warmth. The world narrowed to breath and touch and the familiar heat of him.

Zaria’s back arched as the sensation crested, her hands finding him without thought, fingers tightening at his shoulders as if she needed something solid to hold onto while he made her forget the world outside the bed.

He watched her, the whole time. As if he was determined to carve this version of her into bone. When she broke apart under his attention, when the wave dragged through her and stole words from her tongue, Callen caught the sound against his mouth, kissing her through it, steadying her with his hands as if he refused to let anything of hers spill into the room.

He stayed close after, forehead resting near her jaw, the curve of his mouth betraying a quiet, satisfied smile he would never admit to in public. “Now,” he murmured after a moment, voice low and roughened, “you can go meet that elf.”

Zaria blinked, still hazy at the edges, and a soft laugh escaped before she could stop it. “Jealous dragon,” she whispered. His hand closed around her wrist again, not to restrain, just to feel. “I’m a dragon,” he replied, tone dry. “Jealous is implied.”

She reached up and smoothed her fingertips along his jaw, thumbing away the last edge of that possessiveness. “You know I’m going because I have to,” she reminded him quietly. “Not because I enjoy being in rooms with Koen.”

Callen’s gaze held hers, all the fire and fear and reluctant acceptance there for her alone. “I know,” he admitted. “Doesn’t mean I have to like sharing you with fate and elves and cursed books before breakfast.”

Zaria laughed, warmth blooming through her chest. She kissed him once, quick and soft, sealing the moment like a promise. “I’ll behave.” His eyes narrowed, amused and unconvinced. “Liar.”

She slid away from him and off the bed, deliberate in the way she moved because she knew he watched. The room’s winter chill kissed her skin as she reached for her robe. She pulled it around herself, tying the sash with quick fingers, smoothing the fabric over her body.

When she glanced back, Callen was sprawled among the sheets like he owned them and her with one arm thrown behind his head and a look that hummed with equal parts hunger and pride. “Go,” he murmured. “Before I decide you’re not leaving after all.”

Zaria paused at the door, hand on the latch, and flashed him a smirk over her shoulder. “Try to stop me.” His answering smile was pure threat, bright and dangerous.

She carried that warmth with her down the corridor, the echo of his hands still written along her nerves, a tender ache at her neck where his mouth had marked her. Her pulse steadied as she walked, breath cooling in the quiet air.