“Sarven!”
The sorrow pouring off him just swirls thicker, a black hole swallowing him whole.
I need to reach him. Words aren’t working. The pain is too loud; the grief is too heavy. I need something stronger. Something strong enough to cut through the darkness and drag him back.
I look down at his body, searching for injuries, for a way to help.
The transformation has ravaged him. His chest is broader, his waist tapered, his entire physiology impossibly rewritten in minutes.
And then I see it.
The pouch is gone.
In its place, jutting against his dark skin, is an erection that makes my breath catch in my throat.
It is terrifying.
It’s thick, rigid, and carved with ridges that spiral down a shaft that seems far too long for any human anatomy. And at the base… a swollen, spherical bulge.
A…knot?
Justine had a theory. She said the Drakav change for their mates. That the bond rewrites their biology to bind them to us. To exactly what we want.
He’s changing for me. He’s made himself into this for me.
And now that change is killing him because he thinks I’m not here to receive it.
A pulse of agony rolls off him as a large number of the stars just flicker and fade out of existence.
No.
I don’t think. I don’t analyze. I act on pure instinct.
I straddle his thigh, placing my hand on his chest, right over his heart, and I push.
Here, I scream in my head.I am here.
Then I reach down and wrap my hand around him.
His reaction isviolent.
His back arches off the stone floor with a guttural roar. His eyes fly open, those swirling nebulas directed at the ceiling.
The sorrow flowing out of him fractures. A spike of shock pierces the gloom.
I don’t let go. I tighten my grip, stroking the velvet-hot skin, dragging my thumb over the ridges.
“Feel me.” I stroke him harder. “You feel that? Dead women don’t touch you like this.”
He groans, a sound of wrecked confusion.
It’s not enough. The grief is still trying to pull him under.
I need to shock his system. I need to override the pain with something undeniable.
Keeping my hold on his shaft, I turn and lean down. The heat radiating off him is dizzying. But the scent of his musk and spice and arousal floods my senses instead.
“Come back to me,” I whisper against his skin, right before I open my mouth and take him in.
