This was want, raw and consuming, stripping away every thought that wasn't touch me, claim me, complete this.
My skin felt too tight, stretched over a body that didn't belong to me anymore. The thin sleep shift Meredith had provided clung to my damp skin, and even that whisper of fabric felt like torture—rough where it should have been soft, confining where I needed freedom. I twisted against the sensation, and the movement sent sparks of pleasure racing down my spine.
What was happening to me?
I forced my eyes open. The guest chamber swam into focus through a haze that made everything look overexposed, toobright, too vivid. Dawn light filtered through those impossible windows, painting the clouds in shades of rose and gold that I could taste on my tongue—sweet copper, ozone sharp, the promise of storms.
Wait. Taste?
I shouldn't be able to taste light. But I could feel it too, the way it moved through air currents I'd never noticed before. The wind outside the windows called to me with voices made of pressure differentials and temperature gradients. Every draft, every eddy, every current became visible in my mind like watching rivers flow through invisible channels.
I could sense the exact moment the morning breeze shifted from east to northeast. Could feel how the clouds pressed against the monastery's wards, testing them with patient persistence. Could taste the moisture content in the air—forty-three percent and rising, rain coming by midday.
The awareness should have been overwhelming. Instead, it felt right, like I'd been blind my whole life and someone had just handed me sight.
But beneath that wonder, the need kept building.
I looked down at my arms and bit back a sound that was half gasp, half moan. The bond marks glowed softly in the dawn light—those delicate cloud patterns in storm-gray and silver that had appeared when Caelus caught me. They pulsed in time with my racing heart, each throb sending fresh waves of heat through my body. The marks were warm to the touch when I pressed my fingers against them, almost feverish, and the contact made me arch off the bed.
Between my legs, I was already wet. Not just aroused—soaked, my body preparing itself without any conscious input from me. The realization made my cheeks burn even as my hips lifted involuntarily, seeking friction that wasn't there. My nipples had gone hard enough to hurt, visible through the thin shift,aching for a touch I'd never experienced but somehow knew I desperately needed.
This was wrong. I'd never felt anything like this—not even close. I'd been kissed once, at sixteen, by a boy from the neighboring farm. It had been nice. Pleasant. Nothing like this consuming fire that made me want to tear off my own skin just to feel something, anything, that might satisfy the clawing emptiness inside me.
I tried to sit up and immediately regretted it. The movement shifted the fabric against my sensitized skin, and suddenly I was feeling everything with impossible intensity. The glide of cotton over my breasts felt like fingers trailing fire. The pressure of my thighs pressing together sent shockwaves through my core. Even the air moving across my exposed collarbones felt like foreplay—warm breath, gentle lips, the promise of more.
I gripped the sheets hard enough that my knuckles went white, trying to anchor myself against the waves of sensation. My breathing came in short, desperate pants that made my breasts rise and fall in ways that created more friction, more sensation, more unbearable need.
The bond hummed through me like a plucked string, and I could feel it reaching for Caelus. Searching. Demanding. Complete this, it whispered in a voice made of instinct older than thought. He's yours. You're his. Seal it. Finish it. Become whole.
And oh, how I wanted to. The image rose unbidden—his hands on my skin, his mouth claiming mine, his body covering mine and filling the terrible emptiness that was threatening to consume me from the inside out. I could almost feel it, the moment of connection, the pleasure that would finally, finally satisfy this impossible hunger.
My hand drifted down my stomach, seeking relief, and that's when the wrongness crashed through the desire hard enough to make me freeze.
This wasn't natural. Couldn't be natural. The bond wanted completion, yes—I could feel that truth through our connection. But this intensity, this desperation that felt more like compulsion than choice, this ached with the same cold wrongness as the mark between my shoulder blades.
The mark. The Unnamed's designation, pulsing with its own heartbeat, sending tendrils of corruption through my body.
Horror cut through the haze of arousal like a knife through silk. The mark was pushing back against the bond, I realized with sick certainty. They were fighting for dominance inside me, bond-magic and void-corruption locked in a war that was manifesting as this unbearable need. The Unnamed wanted us to consummate before we were ready, wanted to corrupt the bond at its most vulnerable moment—that first joining when our souls would be most open to each other.
Understanding didn't make the need less intense. If anything, it got worse. Now I could feel the two magics clearly—the bond's desire that felt like sunshine and wind and belonging, and beneath it, the mark's cold insistence that felt like drowning in beautiful darkness. They pulled at me from opposite directions, each demanding surrender, and I was caught in the middle with a body that didn't care about the danger and just wanted relief.
I pressed my palm flat against my lower stomach, trying to breathe through another wave of sensation. The bond marks on my arms flared brighter, responding to my distress, and through them I felt Caelus—
Oh gods, he felt it. Felt me. The bond had carried every bit of my arousal straight to him, and now his alarm spiked through our connection like lightning striking too close. He was already moving, already coming to help, probably terrified of what he'd find.
Part of me—the part still capable of shame—wanted to hide. To pull the blankets over my head and pretend this wasn'thappening. To will my body back under control before he saw me like this, desperate and aching and so far beyond my own understanding that I didn't recognize myself.
But the larger part, the part drowning in need, sang with relief. He was coming. My mate was coming. The bond thrummed with anticipation that made my toes curl and fresh wetness gather between my thighs. Soon. Soon he'd be here, and maybe he'd understand what was happening, and maybe he'd fix it, and maybe—
The treacherous thought slithered through my mind before I could stop it: maybe he'd give me what I needed.
I could feel him getting closer through the bond, each step bringing him nearer. My hands twisted in the sheets. My body arched without permission. The wind outside the windows picked up in response to my distress, clouds pressing harder against the glass like they were trying to reach me.
The door handle turned, and I bit down on my lip hard enough to taste copper, trying desperately to hold onto some shred of control before I completely fell apart.
Caelus filled the doorway like a storm about to break—silver hair disheveled like he'd been running his hands through it, gray eyes gone pale with concern, still wearing sleep clothes that did absolutely nothing to hide the lean muscle underneath. The moment I saw him, what little control I'd been clinging to shattered like glass.
I moved without thinking, without choosing, my body operating on pure instinct that screamed mine, need, now. One second I was tangled in sheets, the next I was across the room with speed that shouldn't have been possible—some gift from the transforming bond making me faster, stronger, more than human.
