He’s awake. Propped on one elbow near the cave entrance. Gold eyes gleaming in the firelight as he watches me thrust into her.
Our gazes lock.
I should stop. Should feel shame, embarrassment, something other than this dark, possessive heat that floods my chest.
Instead, I hold his stare and drive into her harder.
Mine, the look says.Right now, in this moment, she’s mine.
Something flickers across Kieran’s face. Not anger. Not jealousy.
Hunger.
Heat coils low in my stomach — and not just from Kaia clenching around me. Something about his eyes on us, onme, the weight of his attention while I’m buried inside her—
I don’t let myself examine it.
I just thrust harder.
He doesn’t look away.
Neither do I.
I fuck her while he watches. Let him see exactly how she responds to me — the way her back arches, the way she clenches around my cock, the way his name isn’t the one falling from her lips.
“Darian—” She’s close. I can feel it through the bond, building like a wave. “I’m going to—”
“Come for me.” I tear my gaze from Kieran’s. Look down at her. “Give me what I want, Little Shadow. I want to feel it.”
She shatters.
Her whole body convulses beneath me, inner walls clenching so tight around my cock I see stars. My name rips from her throat — loud enough to wake everyone, and I don’t fucking care.
Aspen jerks upright across the fire. Finn’s eyes fly open. Malrik is already awake, watching with an expression I can’t read.
I don’t stop.
The orgasm crashes through me like a wave — and with it, something else. Something deeper.
Whatever Thorne did to me — whatever twisted magic he forced into my veins — I feel itshatter. A pressure I’ve carried so long I forgot it was there suddenly releases, like a fist unclenching around my heart. Something snaps, dissolves, burns away.
I bury myself as deep as I can go and spill into her with a groan that echoes off the stone walls.
What’s left feels… different.
Clean.
Real.
Mine.
Light pulses under my skin. Actual light — warm and golden, the way my magic used to feel before everything went wrong. It flows through the bond, into Kaia, around us both.
Her shadows react.
Walter flares bright, absorbing something from the air. I feel Patricia’s frantic energy, Bob’s posture shifting from guarded to accepting. Mouse makes a sound of satisfaction.
When I finally look back toward the cave entrance, Kieran’s eyes are closed.
