But before I can claw at his eyes or grab for the fallen knife, his hands are on my hips. Fingers digging in hard enough to bruise.
I feel the moment he decides to stop holding back.
Feel his fingers spasm. Feel claws extend with little pops as they punch through the tips of his fingers like blades unsheathing.
Four sharp points on each hip. Pressing through the thin fabric like it's cobweb. Through skin that parts like butter under a hot blade.
The pain is bright and immediate, a lightning strike that cuts through the heat-haze for one clear second before being swallowed by the rising tide of need.
I gasp against his chest. The sound is broken. Half pain, half something else I don't want to name.
"I can smell your blood," he says, and his voice is wrecked beyond recognition. Barely human. "Smells like fire. Like rage. Like mine."
Then he rips the dress.
One savage motion—hands moving in opposite directions, claws shredding fabric and skin together. The sound is obscene, wet tearing that echoes through the silent grove like a scream.
Cool evening air hits my overheated skin and I arch into it like a dying thing seeking water.
But there's no relief.
Only his body covering mine. Pressing me into the warm stone. His claws sinking deeper into my hips, past skin, into the meat of me.
Drawing blood.
My blood this time. Hot and wet where his hands grip me. I feel it welling up around each claw, thin rivers running down my sides to pool beneath me on the ancient stone. The altar drinks it in greedily—three hundred years of blood and death have taught it to be thirsty.
He's shaking.
Fine tremors running through muscle and bone like fault lines before an earthquake. Three hundred years of iron control trying desperately to hold. Trying not to kill me the way he killed all the others. Trying to be gentle when his beast is screaming for violence.
I don't want gentle.
Don't want control.
Want him as feral as I am. Want him as lost to this madness as I'm lost. Want to drag him down into the dark with me.
I rake my nails down his back.
They're sharper now, heat-changed into something between human and predator. I feel skin part beneath them like fabric tearing—not the shallow scratches human nails would leave but deep furrows that well with blood immediately. Four lines down each side of his spine, parallel and precise as the scars he carved into his own ribs.
His breath catches like he's been punched.
His whole body goes rigid above me. Every muscle locked tight. And for a heartbeat—just one heartbeat—his eyes flash gold through the black.
Human consciousness surfacing through the rut like a drowning man breaking water.
He sees me. Really sees me. The omega pinned beneath him with blood painting her mouth and violence burning in her eyes. The one fighting instead of submitting. The one carving wounds into him instead of begging for mercy.
"Kess," he says, and my name sounds like a prayer and a curse and a goodbye all tangled together in his ruined throat.
Then the gold is swallowed by black again.
Only beast remains.
He shifts his grip on my hips. Claws sink deeper—I feel the points scrape against bone now, feel tissue tearing in ways that should make me scream. Blood flows freely from the wounds, hot rivers running down my sides to feed the hungry altar.
I should be in agony.
