"After I was already in the room."
"Rhystan." I force myself to lift my head, to meet his eyes. They're gold again, mostly. Just hints of black at the edges. "I called for you. I said yes. I meant it. Stop trying to find reasons to hate yourself that I didn't give you."
Something shifts in his expression. Something that might be surprise, or gratitude, or both.
"The heat will build again in a few hours," he says quietly. "The cycle won't break until it runs its course. Three days, maybe four." A pause. "I can stay or go. Your choice."
"Stay." The word falls out before I can stop it.
His arms tighten around me.
I feel his relief through the bond—a wave of it washing through my chest.
And some part of me that's been fighting alone my whole life finally stops.
Just for now.
Just while the heat lasts.
Just until I remember that I came here to slice his throat open.
10
Rhystan
I'm goingto knot her.
The thought burns through me as I drive into her, her back arched off the bed, her nails raking furrows down my arms. Two days of this—maybe three, time has stopped meaning anything—and I still can't get enough. Still can't believe she's here, alive, wrapped around me and making sounds of pleasure.
The base of my cock is swelling. I feel it catching on her entrance with each thrust, stretching her wider, and she gasps beneath me, her thighs tightening around my hips.
"Rhystan—" My name in her mouth is like a curse, like a prayer. "I can feel it, you're going to?—"
"Yes." I grind deeper, letting the knot catch and hold. "Take it. Take all of it."
She does.
The knot pushes past her entrance and locks us together, and the sensation rips a groan from somewhere deep in my chest. Tight. So fucking tight, her body clenching around me, squeezing, milking me as I start to come.
I've done this before, many times. But I've neverfeltit before—not like this, not with a mind clear enough to registerthe pleasure instead of drowning in rut-madness and waking to a corpse. Those memories are fragments at best: blood and violence and the beast's savage satisfaction, then nothing but grief and another name to carve in stone.
This is different.
This is her inner walls fluttering around my knot. The wet heat of her cunt clenching with each pulse of my release. The sound she makes—not quite a moan, not quite a sob—as I fill her with more seed than any body should be able to hold. The way her fingers dig into my shoulders like she's trying to anchor herself to something solid while pleasure tears her apart.
And I'mherefor it. Present. Aware. Feeling every second instead of losing it to the red haze of the curse.
"Fuck—" She shudders beneath me, another orgasm rolling through her, her body convulsing around the knot. "It's too much, I can't?—"
"You can." I roll my hips, grinding deeper, and she cries out. "You're taking it. You're taking all of me."
She comes again. Or maybe it's still the same orgasm, one long continuous wave that I can feel through the bond, her pleasure echoing into my chest. I press my face into her throat and breathe her in—sweat and sex and wildflowers, the copper tang of blood from where she's bitten me, underneath it all something wild and ancient that my beast recognizes even if I don't have words for it.
Ours, my beast rumbles.Finally. Ours.
For the first time in three hundred years, I don't argue with it.
We stay locked together as the aftershocks fade. I shift my weight off her—carefully, the knot tugging with each movement—and settle onto my side, pulling her with me until her back is against my chest. She makes a sound of protest at being moved but doesn't fight it. Too wrung out to fight anything.
