CHAPTER 434: I CAN’T BE YOUR WIFE ANYMORE

ZINA’S POV

Daemon smiled even as a shadow of unspoken darkness swarmed in his eyes. He stroked her hair fondly. "You need not to thank me for anything." He said in a voice stricken with clogged emotions, "Actually, I think I should be the one thanking you. Thank you for coming back to me."

They say to have a good man is to have an army. Yet Zina had more than that.

She didn’t just have an army behind her, she had the world.

This man who consoled her. Who thanked her and who held onto her could have been considered her enemy once upon a time. But somewhere along the line, their world shifted and aligned together.

How could she ever think that she was abandoned when she had him? From the moment their mate bond was bestowed upon them, the universe had long started smiling at her. Yet....

She had never doubted his love for her. But now more and than ever, she was even more sure of it. Sure that this man saw her as his world and his family. To be together forever and never part.

After everything that happened, that was her sincere wish as well. To be with him forever, supporting his rule in every way she could. That was her most sincere wish. But fate had a way of playing cruel games because this beautiful dream she longed for had been bought with the life of her mother.

The woman who never abandoned her for a day. Even until her dying breath.

Memories of everything that happened in the white garden slammed into her in quick successions. The determination on her mother’s side as she exchanged her soul for hers, sealing the deformed with the runes of the screamers while damning herself to eternal damnation.

Now that Zina was witnessing such overwhelming love for herself, she found herself grieving in a different way. Not for her story that started with abandonment, but for the fact it was ending with so much love.

Yes, she was deserving of it. She deserved to live and live well. She deserved to be loved by family. She deserved to be cared for and cherished as well. Still, she couldn’t ignore the price that bought this freedom for her.

"Daemon," she whispered in a voice not at all like her own, "to be loved so much by you is my fortune. Perhaps you and I were long fated for each other."

He smiled while he wiped a lone tear she was unaware had rolled down her cheeks. "Have you forgotten you saw me long before we actually met?" He said with a light chuckle, his eyes holding her captive the way only he was able to.

She smiled—how could she ever forget the man who appeared in her visions with the aura of a king and the clothings of a commoner; with yes that pierced through her soul and shattered her heart into a thousand pieces.

"True." She said with a nod, "you and I have long been fated since I was fourteen. Maybe even way before then."

"Zina," he muttered, stroking her cheeks so tenderly she felt it all the way to her heart, "you are my mate. My wife. My all. I would first fight the world before I face the possibility of loosing you again...."

Fresh tears misted her eyes. "I know Daemon. Me too. At the place where I went, I almost regretted it as well. No, I regretted it. I thought the Deformed might as well run down the world as long as I could see and feel you alive. Waiting all eternity for you was just as torturing as imagining the world overrun by them. So I regretted it."

He leaned into her. "But you’re here now, are you not? Right here with me, I would never let go of your hands ever again."

She smiled sadly, her fingers caressing his face as well. Everything about him stood stark and raw before her.

The shadows of his forming beards, the sunkenness of his eyes and the dark circles that surrounded it like a circle of fire, and his dark hair longer and more tousled than it had ever been.

She stroked the side of his face slowly, smiling while he simply drank her in as if to ingrain every part of her into his memory anew. A familiar hunger swirled in his eyes. And when his lips descended for hers... she didn’t stop it.

She welcomed it. Because she needed it for the dreary days that were coming. Both for strength and fortitude to bravely walk this new path that had been set before her.

It was a soft kiss at first. His lips brushed against hers like feathers—hesitant, and with great restraint. When she welcomed it, kissing him back, the intensity increased.

He kissed her harder, his lips engulfing hers until she could no longer tell where her breath ended and his began.

His mouth was warm; starved, reverent, and trembling with everything he had not allowed himself to feel until now. The rasp of his breath smeared against her lips as he deepened the kiss into something born not out of hunger alone, but relief so violent it bordered on sheer worship.

His hand slid from her cheek to cradle the back of her neck, holding her as though she might disappear if he loosened his grasp even a fraction. His thumb stroked her jawline with aching tenderness while his other arm tightened at her waist, drawing her flush against him until every line of his body was screaming ’mine’ without ever needing the word.

Zina melted into him, tasting grief and devotion behind his lips, tasting nights upon nights of sleepless agony... and a loneliness so vast she wondered how he had continued breathing through it.

The kiss moved slowly at first, like he was reacquainting himself with a language he had almost forgotten how to speak. Then, when she whimpered softly into his mouth, his restraint cracked. The kiss turned molten, deeper, rougher, desperate. He devoured her not as a wolf reclaiming his mate, but as a man reclaiming the pulse of his own existence.

Her fingers fisted his cloak, dragging him closer still, drinking him in, memorizing the uneven cadence of his breathing, the faint tremor in his shoulders, the small, ragged breaks in his composure that she alone was allowed to witness.

His nose brushed hers when he finally slowed, their mouths still hovering open against each other, breaths mingling hot and uneven between soft grazes of lips too reluctant to part.

"Daemon..." she whispered against his mouth, barely sound at all.

His forehead pressed to hers, as though tethering her in place. His voice, when he finally spoke, was ruined—low, rough, and completely stripped to the core.

"I thought... I would never feel you again."

Emotion clogged his throat, turning every word into something raw and unguarded. Something that tasted like a confession dragged out of the deepest part of his bones.

Her thumb stroked the corner of his mouth, gentling him the way he had always gentled her in silence.

"You feel me now," she breathed, brushing her lips over his again, "but you know it that they are certain things... I must do."

He stared at her as if he long knew of the thoughts that she bore...wicked as they were.

He kissed her, tugging at her lips until it stung with pleasure. "I know." He growled, holding her tighter.

Her lips wobbled, and it felt so wrong so speak the words that swirled in her mind in the intimate space that they now shared.

But she squared her shoulders, ready to shoulder her responsibilities. "I must mourn my mother, Daemon."

"Then we will mourn her together." He almost snapped, his lips caressing her neck while he resumed torturing her by peppering hot, tongue trailing kisses against her flesh.

She tugged him off, holding him at bay because he was depriving her of the ability to think properly.

The words she must speak broke her heart. But if she couldn’t do this much for her mother, then she would be nothing but an ungrateful and undeserving daughter.

"You know that’s not what I mean, Daemon. To mourn her properly the traditional way as the Luna she once was, it’s demanded that I be clean and free from worldly frivolities for at least one year. So for one year, I can’t be your wife anymore, Daemon. Or your Queen."