He squeezed hers back.
Blowing out a deep breath, her father nodded. “Then if you’re happy—”
“I am,” both she and Giles said at once.
Violet smiled. “Oh, honey, if you can’t tell these two are madly in love, then you’re blind.”
Patting his wife’s hand, her father chuckled. “Oh, I can spot it when I see it, Violet.” Standing, he draped his arm around his wife and nodded. “We give you our blessing.”
Overjoyed, Lilith ran to her parents and wrapped her arms around the both of them. “Thank you.”
Sniffing, Ewan withdrew a drawer and pulled out two necklaces. One that bore a square pendant and another that bore a heart. “Then here are yer stones of Veritas.”
Taking them in her hands, she turned to Giles who spread his arms for her.
Giving her parents one final kiss on their cheeks, she returned back to her soon-to-be mate’s side and snuggled into his arms.
“You ready for forever, mate?” she whispered at him.
“I don’t know, Lilith. I think I want longer than forever.”
“How about infinity, then?” She leaned up on tiptoe.
“Yes.” He leaned down until his mouth was just inches from hers. “For starters, anyway.”
Laughing, they sealed their promise with a kiss.
Epilogue
Lilith had had to walk outside of the safety of the glen to call Ying’s name. It’d taken her and Giles nearly a day to find a secure place to call the ladies to her. They’d come almost instantly and she’d handed it back to them with great relief. The moment Ying grasped it the three of them had shimmered with a rolling blue radiance that had seeped from their pores.
She could only hope that in the future they would look at her not as an enemy, but a friend. Crazy it was she sort of liked the deadly three. Especially Rayale—she could have sworn there’d been something present in Lleweyn’s eyes even now when he spoke of the piper.
But Lilith had gone outside of her glen for a reason other than handing back the orb. Now it was just she and her knight in the woods surrounded by the glow of burning torches stuck inside hollowed-out tree trunks. They stepped into the circle of light naked.
Giles and she both held up their stones together.
“You still sure about me?” Lilith asked, giving him one last chance to back out.
He smirked. “I’m going to die if we don’t do this already. I want you in every way conceivable, my wolf. No going back.”
Lifting the necklaces, they draped them around each other’s necks and then grabbing hands, repeating in unison, “My life with yours. Forever.”
The stones instantly glowed with an indigo radiance, the sign of truest love.
She cupped his cheek. “And now I will show you how a wolf does it.”
His ruby-red eyes gleamed hotly. “I’m waiting, female.”
With a throaty growl she stepped into him and wrapped his hand around her waist. His arousal poked her hard in the thigh.
Hungry for her mate, she nibbled onto the corner of her lip as her teeth began to slowly drop and elongate. Her wolf howled its joy deep inside her soul.
They’d found their other half.
“Bare your neck to me, knight. Trust me.”
“I always do.” He tipped his jaw to the side, exposing the long length of his neck.
Fangs fully dropped, she first traced the length of his vein with her nose, inhaling the smoked-cherry scent of his flesh. It filled her head with delicious and heady images of the two of them entwined. Then she bit him, shoving her fangs right through his vein. Not to drink from him, but to brand him as hers.
He hissed, but his hands roamed her body and his thighs shook. Giles was enjoying it. Pulling back, she lapped at the droplet of blood that welled. Only once in her life would her fangs drop in this way: only to mark her man as hers.
Now that she’d taken his blood into her body, it was his turn. Turning her wrist up, she shoved her fangs through the vein in her wrist. The fangs were sharp like needles, not gouging and bleeding, but drawing just a little blood from the two of them.
Turning her wrist to his lips, she smiled. “Kiss my wound.”
He never hesitated. Grabbing her hand, he placed a tender kiss against it. When he came up her blood was on his lips. And the moment he licked it away she shivered as the drop of his blood she’d consumed raced through her body like a shot of adrenaline.
His eyes rolled into the back of his head as hers did the same to him.
Then he laughed and she did, too, because she didn’t just feel her joy, she felt his. It breathed alive inside of her. His emotions were now her own and hers were his.
His eyes widened. “I feel you, Lili.” He placed the palm of his hand against her heart.
She did the same to him. “And I feel you. You are mine and I am yours. Whatever happens to you, will happen to me. My heart and yours, and this is truly forever, my knight.”