Hot. So hot. His touch hurt because my skin was the barrier. Death meeting life at the surface, resistance and friction. But inside, where I was nothing but void and emptiness, there was no barrier to burn through, just space desperate to be filled.
The heat didn’t fight its way in. It flooded, it anchored, it fed me.
I grabbed his wrist.
My fingers closed around his arm before I could think, before I could stop myself, and I pulled his hand harder against my mouth.
His blood flowed over my lips, my tongue, down my throat. I drank greedily. Because I had been dying, I realized. I’d been dying of thirst for three months, and I hadn’t even known what I was missing.
More.
I needed more.
My teeth grazed his palm, and he made a sound, low, rough, somewhere between pain and pleasure. His free hand came up to cup the back of my head, holding me against his bleeding flesh, and his fingers tangled in my hair as I fed.
The heat spread through me in waves. Down my throat, into my chest, through my arms and legs and fingers and toes.
I felt my heart stuttering back to life. Not the frantic rabbit-pulse of the petals, but something deeper. Slower. A bass drum in my chest, thudding in time with his own heartbeat.
His rhythm now. His blood. His fire, burning in my veins.
And then…
A snap. A rope pulled taut and tied off.
My soul, which had been drifting loose in my body since I crawled out of that grave, slammed back into place with a violence that made me gasp against his palm.
Anchored.
I was anchored.
I drank until I couldn’t drink anymore. Until he pulled his hand away, and a gasp of objection escaped me that would have embarrassed me if I’d had the capacity for shame.
His palm was still bleeding sluggishly, the wound already starting to close. Shifter healing. The cut would be gone by morning.
But his blood was in me now.
I could feel it. A warmth at my center that wasn’t borrowed or stolen or counterfeit. A heat that belonged to me now, integrated into whatever passed for my biology.
I pressed my hand to my chest and felt the heartbeat there. Steady, strong, synced to his.
“Look.”
His voice was rough. Strained. I fluttered my lashes, fighting the heavy, drugged sensation of the feeding, and followed his gaze.
A thread of light stretched between us.
Gold, bright as sunrise, a thin filament. I didn’t know if anyone else could see it, if this was visible only to us, or to anyone with the sight. But in that moment, I didn’t care.
It connected his chest to mine, pulsing gently with each shared heartbeat. When I moved, it moved. When he breathed, I felt the echo of it in my own lungs.
“What is that?”
“A tether.” He was watching the golden thread with an expression I couldn’t read. Satisfaction, maybe. Or hunger.
“My blood in your veins. My fire in your heart.” He reached out, traced a finger along my jaw. “Now you have the fire of a King in you. You’re anchored now, little bride. Bound to me by something stronger than vows or rings or any human promise.”
I should have been afraid. Should have been furious. He’d done this without asking, without explaining, without giving me a choice.
