Reject me twice (Kira and Theron) novel Chapter 31

[Kira’s POV]

I woke slowly, the way you surface from a dream you’re not ready to leave.

Sunlight poured through the tall arched windows of the Silver Queen’s chambers—my chambers, though I still hadn’t grown used to thinking of them that way—and painted everything in warm gold.

The air smelled of cedarwood and frost and something deeper, something that made my wolf curl up inside me like a cat beside a fire, utterly content.

Malik.

He was still asleep beside me, one arm draped across my stomach, his face pressed into the curve of my shoulder. I didn’t move. I barely breathed.

I just looked at him the way I’d never been able to before—without interruption, without the weight of secrets or duty or the constant, grinding fear that the next moment would rip everything apart.

His face was different in sleep. The sharp edges of his jaw softened. The careful blankness he wore like armor dissolved into something younger, almost boyish, and my chest ached with a tenderness so fierce it frightened me.

The scars on his chest caught the morning light—a lattice of pale silver lines that told the story of every fight he’d survived on his way up from nothing.

I knew those scars now. I’d traced each one with my fingers last night while he watched me with those steady dark eyes, letting me map the history of his pain without flinching.

“If you keep doing that,” he murmured without opening his eyes, his voice rough with sleep, “we’re never leaving this bed.”

“Is that supposed to discourage me?” I whispered against his skin, and felt the rumble of his quiet laugh vibrate through his ribs and into mine.

His arm tightened around my waist, pulling me closer until there was no space left between us, and when he finally opened his eyes, the look in them made everything inside me go still.

No walls. No calculation. Just warmth—deep, unshielded, devastating warmth—and something so raw and certain it made my throat close.

For the first time in my entire life, I felt completely, terrifyingly safe.

His hand came up to cup my face, and when he kissed me it was slow and unhurried, as if we had all the time the world had ever made.

His hands moved over me with a reverence that undid me—fingertips tracing the curve of my hip, the dip of my waist, the royal markings on my wrists that had once been scars I was ashamed of.

He kissed those too, his lips warm against the raised silver lines, and I shuddered not from pain but from the staggering intimacy of being known completely and wanted anyway.

“I need to tell you something,” he said afterward, his forehead resting against mine. His fingers threaded through my hair, and I could feel his heartbeat where my palm lay flat against his chest, steady and strong.

“I’ve loved you since the night I found you at the border. You were bleeding, half out of your mind with heat, slamming your fists against a barrier that should have killed you on contact. And you wouldn’t stop. You just kept hitting it, over and over, with your hands shaking and your teeth bared, and I thought—”

His voice caught, just slightly, and Malik’s voice never caught. “I thought, there she is. There’s the one they couldn’t break.”

“You were the first person who made me believe I could be strong. Everyone else saw something broken or something useful. A servant or an heir or a weapon. You just saw me. Before the crown, before the wolf, before any of it—you looked at me like I was already enough.”

I buckled his weapons belt while he watched me with dark, soft eyes, and when I fumbled the clasp he covered my hands with his.

“Tonight,” he said, catching my hand as I reached for the door. He pressed his lips to my palm and folded my fingers over the kiss like a secret. “Tonight, and every night after. As long as you’ll have me.”

The words rose from somewhere deep and certain. A place that was just mine—just Kira, just the girl who’d once been broken at a border, choosing the man who’d seen her whole.

“Forever,” I said.

His smile was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

We left separately, because appearances still mattered. He went first, slipping through the side passage with the silent grace of a man who’d spent half his life moving through shadows.

I waited three minutes, then stepped into the corridor alone, my chin lifted, my expression composed, every inch the Silver Queen the court expected.

But beneath the armor of duty and diplomacy, I carried his warmth with me like a flame cupped between my palms—steady, bright, and impossible to extinguish—into the cold halls where the weight of the crown waited.