When Kyra turned her gaze back to Zane, the sight that greeted her was precisely what she expected to see. He was standing at the end of their bed, fingers curled into fists and looking like a snake coiled and ready to attack. Which he was. Thinking better of just approaching him, Kyra sat next to where he stood on the bed.
"Are you alright?" she asked quietly. She wasn't exactly afraid of the cobra—at this point she was pretty sure she couldn't be—but she didn't think it to be wise to get too close.
A deep breath left his lips in the form of a low hiss. Slowly, Zane seemed to relax. "Yes. I am . . . sorry for the way I reacted."
Kyra reached out and offered her hand to him. "Why are you apologizing, Zane? You didn't do anything wrong."
"I'm a monarch now," he grumbled, accepting her warm hand with his cool one. "I can't just yell at people who piss me off anymore . . . I'm supposed to be more . . . regal . . . than that, I guess."
That caused the eagle to laugh. "As regal as you are, I don't think that it's going to be a problem that you snapped on her. She's not a monarch anymore. My sister is. And Danica is obviously on our side for this whole situation. Don't worry about offending Nacola."
"So you're not angry at me for yelling at her? She is your mother, after all. I would understand if—"
Kyra broke him off by pulling him down into a kiss. "Don't worry about it so much," she whispered against his lips. "You have no . . . idea . . . how much it means to me . . . that you're willing . . . to stand up to my mother for me," the sentence was punctuated by a series of little kisses after every few words.
Zane smiled a little at her actions. "Oh, really?"
Their lips sealed together again before Kyra could respond.
It was only several minutes later that she found herself even able to. By that point, they'd flipped over so that Zane was lying flush against her body over her with their heads at the foot of the bed. "What are we doing?" she panted slightly.
Zane took a shaky breath. "Only what you're ready for." The look in his eyes told her that he was genuinely willing to stop right there if she wanted.
Which only prompted her to pull at his shirt to get it off.
"Are you sure you want to do this?" Zane asked, not willing to budge on the subject until she verbally responded. He knew very well what sex meant to the Avians. It was a much bigger deal than it was to Serpiente.
Kyra almost said those three magical words that seemed so harmless yet meant so much, but she refrained. This wouldn't be how she told him how she felt about him. It wouldn't just be an excuse so she could bed the man. It meant so much more than that. "I trust you, Zane. And I want you."
A shy little grin formed on the cobra's face at those words. Kyra could almost see a tinge of a blush on his cheeks.
"Besides, you're pretty sexy when you're angry," she whispered in his ear. Falling back onto the bed, she relaxed and enjoyed the aftermath of that mildly ridiculous statement.
Zane broke out into full-body giggles with the statement, and his cheeks were thoroughly red. The absurd, out-of-character sentence rendered him useless as he laughed. It was only a few minutes later that he composed himself enough to kiss her once more, but even then he was still grinning.
Things heated up quickly from there.
Yes, it was slightly awkward since it was Kyra's first time, but there were no complaints from either party. Afterwards, the pair collapsed—somehow at the correct end of the bed—in each other's warm embraces and quickly nodded off from exhaustion. Between the stress of the ceremony and the physical exertion they'd just enjoyed, it wasn't a big surprise that they were tired.