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It's only a matter of time before a doe wanders into the glade, drawn to the clear pond. In the sunlight, her hide shines bronze, and her neck arches as she lowers her head for a drink.
Feyre checks that she's downwind and notches an arrow. Even standing in the shade in loose cotton, clothes designed for the approaching summer, a bead of sweat trickles down her spine. She tries to shut out the heat, tracking which direction the hind's ears swivel while she drinks. If she doesn't make the kill, she has some dried rabbit she can boil, but she could use the extra meat for the week ahead.
A twig snaps. The hind jolts. With a hiss of frustration, Feyre swings her arrow away from the fleeing deer and onto the intruder's chest.
Their identity is clear even before they step out of the shadows between the trees: upwind of him as she is, she scents the citrus on his skin. Shadows flock to him even in the dappled glade, settling over the lines of his body like armor as he stalks into the clearing.
"Hello, Feyre," Rhys says.
Every time, he's even more beautiful than she remembers from the year before. In the past few decades, his hair's silvering roots have started betraying his age, but time can't erase the warrior's build he's honed after centuries of Illyrian training. As always, he approaches her dressed in the simple, flowing tunic and pants he used to wear in their home.
The bow creaks under her grip. She curses herself for not bringing any ash arrows. "Hello, Rhys."
He takes another step toward her, ignoring the arrow trained on him. "You look well."
He's already managed to strip her bare, her skin prickling under his unblinking gaze. A telltale musk overshadows his scent, and a soft, pliant creature in the back of her mind stirs for the first time in a year.
"No thanks to you," She says.
"No?" Rhys takes another step toward her. "Do you have any idea how many fools have come looking for you in the past few months alone? The Cursebreaker, living alone in the Middle…" He cocks his head. "Do you ever wonder why they never reach you?"
"There are scarier things than you in the woods," She says.
Rhys sneers. "Not when I hear the things they want to do to you."
That, she believes. She still remembers Keir's bones crunching in the Hewn City, the former Steward's high, breathless whimpers as Rhys liquified his arm joint by joint. The blood running down his forearms after Hybern's ravens found her and Nesta in the library.
The open satisfaction on his face when he made Tamlin grovel in his own home for the crime of having her.
Feyre bites the inside of her cheek. Pain brings her back to the present. "You're early."
"Am I?" Rhys muses. His long legs devour the space between them, and Feyre wills herself to stand her ground as the arrowhead digs into his shirt. "You've been hunting more recently. Weaving more, too." His voice drops an octave. "Have you finished building your nest yet, mate?"
A wave of heat rolls through her. Every year—every fucking year—she tries to excise what he is to her, what they were, from her consciousness, and tuck it so deep inside of her mind that she forgot the truth herself. A daemati's self-amputation, painful but necessary. It's the only way she can keep away from him.
And every year, he wakes her up when he arrives.
Rhys pushes the bow down, guiding Feyre's arms to her sides. She screws her eyes shut, unable to meet his burning gaze.
"Omega," he entreats. Feyre shivers. An instinctive, answering whine threatens to escape her, and she clenches her teeth together until they ache. Rhys's hand sears her cheek as he brushes a stray strand of hair behind her ear. The bow eases out of her fingers as he envelops her, winding both arms around her body.
"Omega," he repeats, and this time it's an open-mouthed sigh that he presses against the old teeth marks in her throat.
Feyre gasps. The cord in her chest goes taut, yanking her against his solid chest. Every instinct she's staved off breaks free, triumphant. Alpha, mate, ours, forever—
"This"—she manages—"this isn't part of the bargain."
He's not supposed to come unsummoned. He needs to wait until she really, truly can't help herself, and the begging comes unbidden. There's no other way she wants him—no other way she can let herself want him, not after everything.
"I can hear your thoughts halfway across Prythian," Rhys says. He hooks his fingers in her belt loops, fixing himself to her. "Is that not summons enough for you? You're barely holding yourself together."
She shakes her head, splaying her hands over his shoulders. She's been telling herself that she's sweaty, but it's not perspiration pooling between her thighs.
"It's time." This close, she feels his voice rather than hears it. "We agreed to this." He grasps her chin and tilts her head to the side, lapping greedily at the oils glistening on her gland's surface.
Feyre groans. "I'm not in heat yet, you selfish prick."
"Maybe it's not just about heat." One of his hands is heavy on the back of her neck, not scruffing her yet but reminding her that he could. "Is that really so terrible?"
No, of course not. Not when every fiber of her being preens under his unblinking gaze, her instincts writhing in her hold. Alpha, her traitorous soul whispers. Alpha and omega, ending and beginning, mate, mate, mate.
He lifts her into his arms, bow forgotten somewhere in the underbrush, and winnows them back to her cabin. Sunlight streams through the window's thick glass panes, falling on the simple wooden table in the kitchen. On top of it, drying herbs lay splayed over a repurposed cheesecloth, perfuming the air. Still not putting her down, Rhys walks to the kitchen cabinet, checking the rows of seaglass bottles. "How long have you been out of yarrow for?"
"I was going to gather more today."
He snorts and holds another empty bottle—the Silphium, Feyre notes with unease—up to the light. "No, you weren't."
"First you're impatient, and now you want to waste your time bickering about weeds?"
Rhys laughs softly. "Are you sure I'm the impatient one?"
Through the thickening haze, Feyre realizes what he's doing. He's not allowed to come early, not allowed to come unsummoned, but because of the nature of their bond, it's a moot requirement. He can't come early. Desperate for her mate as her foolish body is, his presence after such long stretches apart from each other is enough to trigger her heat, on schedule or not.
Which he must have known when he agreed to her terms, the narcissistic boor.
"Is the cistern full?" He asks.
He's as inevitable as nightfall. "Yes."
This dance between the two of them is as familiar as her own face. As familiar as the callouses scraping her thighs as he carries her deeper into the cottage, lowering her into her nest on the bedroom floor. The way he eases her down into the pile of furs and yanked-down tapestries would be tender if she didn't know him better than that.
He laughs when he sees the stripped bed, running a long, delicate finger over the mars in the wooden bedposts. "Still tying yourself down at night, I see."
"That's none of your fucking business." Her clothes itch, and she squirms against the pelts under her back. Desire, his and hers, hangs in the air like a miasma. Feyre wonders if she'll have to shuck off her own skin to escape the fire coursing through her veins. She can feel the fever in her bones, threatening to unmake her, and everything aches—her head, her muscles, her chest. Her cunt.
"My sweet mate," Rhys purrs. "Does it hurt, the pull to come North?" He runs his fingers over her wrists, rubbed raw from the nightly rope. "Does binding yourself stop you when you try to sleepwalk to me, or do you wake up in the woods with bloody wrists?" As if he's not in her head enough to know the answer.
He lowers himself into the nest next to her, running a large hand down her spine. Feyre presses her stomach into the floor, fighting the urge to arch into his demanding touch. "Does your needy little cunt ache for my knot?"
She glares at him. "I ache for you to leave me the fuck alone, Rhysand."
He laughs. "Rhysand? Since when have we become enemies?"
"If you truly need to know, there's no point telling you."
He snorts and unbuckles the knives across his torso, tossing the scabbard into a corner of the cabin. "How long are you going to keep playing this game, darling?"
"How long will it take you to stop trying?"
Rhys raises an eyebrow and slips his hands under the hem of her tunic, coaxing it up over her head. "When the moon falls out of the sky." He tosses the abrasive fabric in the same direction as the scabbard. Feyre groans with relief. He holds up her left arm, lifting it up to her face until she can only stare at the intricate ink looping over her blue veins. "No matter where you are, you're still mine." He kisses the joint where she used to wear his ring. "Especially now."
Feyre's stomach clenches, and it's not entirely in displeasure. She hates him, she really does, for the hold he still has on her after all this time—the hold he will always have on her—but the reminder of what he's here for has her pressing her thighs together. "You're obsessed," she accuses, lifting her hips to help him tug her trousers off.
Rhys laughs. "You used to love it." His hands slide up her ribs, thumbing her nipples. This time, she can't stop herself from leaning into his touch. The relief from undressing is short-lived, and even the nest's fabric is rough against her skin now. The only contact that's tolerable is the male looming over her. "You used to love me," Rhys adds. "I think you still do." He hooks a finger under the waistband of her panties. "Lace? To go hunting? But you don't want me here, I'm sure."
Feyre bares her teeth at him. "Nobody wants you more than you want yourself." This part, too, is familiar. There was a time when everything was sweet between them, but once she'd gotten pregnant, she knew his softness wasn't quite the truth. She'd been a girl, especially compared to now, all those centuries later. She hadn't understood what it meant to tie herself to someone called the Lord of Many Faces.
Not until her sister had told her how, once again, he'd hidden a devastating truth from her, this time about her own death. That he'd once again robbed her of her ability to make decisions about her own future, instead discussing her pregnancy with everyone except her. There wasn't any moving forward after that.
Rhys's jaw flexes. "You're my mate, Feyre."
"And?" The word comes out breathier than she intends. He's hard against her hip, and she can't quite remember why, exactly, she should be repulsed by her capable, clever male. "That's not love."
He snarls, his canines flashing. "That's devotion." He wraps her braid around his fist, forcing her to bare her throat. His mouth descends on her mating gland, and Feyre yelps out as pleasure cuts through her like a whip. "Who paid for this home? If I didn't love you, you wouldn't be here, omega."
An answering whine slips out of her throat before she could stop it.
"You have no idea," he adds roughly, fumbling with the laces on his trousers, "what it's like to feel you day in and day out. To hear you and not be able to go to you." He tugs his pants down over his hips. "It drives me insane."
His cock springs free, the tip already glossy. Feyre's omegan instincts preen. Our mate, so strong, so big, perfect to give us another—
Feyre takes a deep breath.
Rhys yanks her panties off, leaving her exposed under him. He groans at the sight and wedges his hips between hers, spreading her open. His hand is hot on her thighs, sliding upwards into familiar, dangerous territory. Rhys's tongue lazily lapping at her mating gland until she's making aborted little whimpers into his shoulder. Skin on skin, she's finally soothed, comfortable, even though it's still not enough—won't be enough until she's squirming on his knot, and even then only until it goes down and they have to start again.
Suddenly, his fingers are slippery against her core. Her hips jerk. "It's alright, darling," Rhys murmurs. "You don't have to hide that you like it like this."
He props himself up on one forearm to watch her face as he sinks two fingers into her slick body. Feyre gasps, curling her nails into his broad shoulders. "Fuck," Rhys sighs. "You're so fucking tight." He lowers his head to wrap his lips around her pert nipple. Feyre cries out. "Easy," he mutters. "Have to get you ready to take my knot, hmm? My sweet, perfect omega, about to start begging for her mate's cock in her hungry cunt."
Feyre spreads her legs, inviting him deeper, harder, but his fingers alone can't stretch her the way she so desperately needs. She feels his smile against her sternum as his thumb finds her clit. She comes embarrassingly fast, thighs shaking as he works her through her orgasm with infuriating single-mindedness.
Finally, when the stimulation is too much, she slaps his chest. He pulls away, sitting back on his haunches. "Do you remember the first time you fed me this?" He holds up his hand, fingers slick with the unrefutable evidence of her pleasure. His tongue flicks out to sample her. Rhys's eyes flutter shut as he groans. "Fuck, darling. You still taste as divine as you did then."
Feyre pants, struggling for breath. Her ebbing pleasure stokes the fire in her navel hotter. As he intends, no doubt.
He's still sitting far too far away from her, head cocked like a wolf. The muscles in his shoulders ripple, his beast straining under his skin. "Please, Rhys." She can't leash herself any more, not around him, and her legs spread wider, inviting him to come back into the mess he's made of her. Her head lolls to the side, her inflamed gland like an angry bruise against her throat. "Please, Alpha, please, I need it now." I'll do anything, she almost says, but she's not that far gone. Not yet.
He looks down at her, his eyes black and bottomless. "Need what, darling?"
"You—stop fucking teasing me—"
He moves closer, still sitting up, and comes back over her, putting her ankles on his shoulders. "What do you need?" he presses. Feyre has no leverage in this position, barely able to squirm as his warm cock bumps against her aching core.
Worse, she can't avoid him. At least when he puts her on her knees, she doesn't have to see the way he looks at her like a starved male.
She cants her hips, trying to catch him inside of her, but he shifts his pelvis just out of the way. "Ask me clearly, darling." Her eyes burn as a frustrated tear trickles down her cheek. She tries to kick him, but he just tightened his grip and kisses her ankle. "Tell me what you need, and I'll give it to you."
"Please, Rhys." She can't breathe, can't think under the weight of his scent. "Please, give me your knot."
The kiss he presses to her forehead is obscenely chaste. "Good girl." The words pool in Feyre's stomach like liquor, and he pushes into her.
Feyre can't look away from his blown pupils as her works her open. He goes slow, but he's so big—has always been, but she isn't used to it any more—and in this position he's immediately hitting deep. His arm tightens around her calves, keeping her legs up and her body open. Feyre's chest heaves, but he doesn't leave any space for air in her lungs.
When he finally bottoms out, Feyre pants without sound, trying to breathe around the pressure of him inside of her. The fever is fraying her nerves, dulling the discomfort of him bumping against all the deepest parts of her body. Rhys hisses a curse in Illyrian, spreading a wide hand across her navel to feel how full she is. He shifts his hips, and Feyre can't swallow her whimper.
He rocks his hips, sliding halfway out, and Feyre manages a gasp before he sinks back into her and she chokes on the sound. Rhys looks down at her, eyes heavy and lidded. "I do still love you, you know."
She wants to scream at him to stop wasting time. She wants to beg him to wait. She wants him gone, she wants him to never leave, and she wants him to be better male who never would have put them in this fucking position to begin with.
Feyre growls. "Don't fucking say that to me."
He raises an eyebrow. "As my lady wishes."
The next thrust is brutal, his hips slamming into her ass. Rhys fucks her in earnest, dark scales peppering his neck, and she hates him, she really does—hates that he's her mate, hates that she's agreed to let him do this to her, hates that her legs lock around his hips when he finally loosens his grip enough to let them. He leans over her, their bodies sliding easily against each other. She doesn't have any insults left for him, only high, broken cries which he rips out of her every time he bottoms out.
Rhys's teeth are on her nipples, and it's electric. She rakes her nails down his back, a punishment and a plea. He's right that this is what she likes, that this is when she feels most alive—fighting and fucking, pushing and pulling. He might not be her better half, but he's her other half, and in this moment, she wants him to stay locked inside of her. He bites down on her breast at the same time he slips a hand between her thighs. Light explodes behind Feyre's shut eyes, and her second orgasm has her clenching on him greedily.
He slips out of her. Feyre snarls, because how dare he deny her what she so desperately needs, but Rhys just tsks. "Easy, darling." The world lurches as he flips her over. His hands encircle her wrists, pressing her palms to the ground so that she can hold her own weight when he mounts her. "You only allow me a week a year, and you think I'll give you a knot before you've even presented properly?"
A tattooed arm comes down on either side of her head, caging her underneath his broad body. The muscles in his forearms are taut, his control slipping as he slips closer and closer to rut. Rhys guides himself back into her aching body. Her sore muscles burn from the stretch, and she groans softly as he sets a fast, unrelenting pace. Slick runs down the insides of her thighs, drenching the room in sickly-sweet perfume as he fucks into her with an obscene squelch.
"Oh, Gods." Feyre lets her cheek fall against the soft nest, canting her hips higher as his knot catches on her entrance with each thrust. Even as he's splitting her open, his emerging talons are gentle on her hips, her chest, caressing and cupping her reddened skin as if he still hasn't committed her to memory after all this time.
His heartbeat pounds against her spine as he leans over her, his lips brushing the shell of her ear. "Feyre," he murmurs, "I'm going to get you pregnant."
What's left of her mind wakes up, and she arches her spine in an attempt to buck him off. The angle only drives him deeper into her, and she cries out as the head of his cock presses insistently into a deep, hidden spot only he's ever been able to reach.
"I already gave you an heir," she manages.
"This isn't about what I want." Liar. His lengthening canines prick the nape of her neck. "Wouldn't you like that, darling? To get filled up until something takes? Having someone to keep you company, especially in the summer when the nights are short?" He nuzzles the base of her skull, inhaling her scent. "Something of mine to tide you over until I come back?"
"I—"he snaps his hips, and the words spin away from each other, slipping and sliding too far into the ether. Is it his rut talking, or has he planned this, too? "I don't want that, Rhys."
"Why not?" he says. "What are you afraid of? That they'll also choose to come to Court eventually? That they'll come home?"
Nyx. The old scar splits open, and she keens. Her first, sweet pup, to whom she'd whispered I love you before he knew what language was, gone. Losing him had been losing a piece of herself, even though she understood what he'd seen - she, too, would have gone North out of curiosity and duty to the throne which was his heavy inheritance.
Rhys grasps her jaw, turning her head to the side so that he can lap the tear running down her cheek. "If you miss him, let me give you another."
Yes, yes, yes, her omega chants, guiding her stomach against the ground as he tugs her hips higher. The furs beneath her scrape her oversensitive nipples, and her back aches from the unnatural position even as her legs splay wider. Rhys is on one knee, his other foot flat against the bedding for leverage that knocks the air out of her with each thrust. One hand teases her clit, and his knot catches on her puffy cunt, threatening to wedge inside of her with each trust.
"Alpha," Feyre chokes. "Don't—" Don't do it, don't stop, don't leave me—
His teeth sink into her scruff, and Feyre sees white. Rhys curses against her skin, low and filthy, and an impossible girth strains against the entrance to her body. Feyre gasps, scrabbling for purchase on the blankets beneath her as he puts his full weight on her, pushing her flat on her stomach until she can't do anything but lay still and whimper as her body yields to his knot, toes curling as she milks him with greedy tugs.
Momentarily, the scorching tide recedes. Rhys shifts above her, reaching for something out of sight, and she moans softly as his knot jostles inside of her. A bowl of cool water presses to her lips, and she drinks. Distantly, she knows she should probably slap him, but she's exhausted.
Can it ever stop, this madness between them?
Rhys rolls them onto their sides, slinging one leg over Feyre's to keep her close. His fingers rub soothing circles into her hips. The shredded fabric under her fingers smokes, embers devouring the ruined edges.
"How is he?" she croaks.
She rises and falls with Rhys's sigh. "Good. He misses you."
Her chest tightens. "He knows he's always welcome here."
"He thinks you resent him for leaving."
That's… also not entirely untrue, although she can't bring herself to admit it.
Rhys kisses her scalp. "Come home and see him, darling." He mouths at her throat, tongue running over the small hurts he'd peppered her skin with. "Let me take care of you again, Feyre."
The daylight reddens, and long shadows creep across the floorboards. Rhys's knot hasn't gone down, but Feyre can't stop herself from grinding back on him, the heat in her blood rising once again. He growls softly, fingers digging in her hips hard enough to bruise.
"I'm out of Silphium because I took the last of it this morning," She tells him. "Before you get your hopes up."
He sighs. "Of course you did."
"But." She swallows. "I'll give you another heir next time. If you agree that it'll be the last time you come here, and that you'll leave me in peace. And tell Azriel to stop spying on me." Rhys's visits might be curved by their bargain, but of course he'd tried to find a loophole. "I can take care of myself."
Rhys snarls. "What kind of bargain is that?"
She twists her head enough to give him a pointed look. "Wouldn't we both get something we want?"
"I think you want me to say no." She hates the amusement in his voice, the quiet delight at her wickedness. "So that you don't have to admit how much you miss me." His fingers march teasingly up her spine. Feyre clenches her jaw and turns away from him.
"Come home," he entreats again, this time a plea. "Feyre." A prayer.
Not for the first time, she imagines the alternative: him coming here, living with her in the wild. Away from his Court of vipers and the poison of power. Him leaving it behind to live with her quietly, languidly.
Has he never suggested it because he can't fathom it, or because he won't? Would it even be possible?
The worst part is, she does miss how things used to be. But they have nothing but time, and Feyre learned how to hold a grudge long before she knew how to be patient.
The next wave rises, kindling the fire under her skin. She grinds back on him, savoring his hiss as she allows them both a burst of friction. "Feyre." His hands tighten on her hips.
She smiles into the sheets. "Fine." She'll be at his mercy again in a few minutes, but later, once the haze starts to clear... "I have another bargain to offer you."