Jax throws his head back and screams—a sound of agony and ecstasy.
I watch the wound on his flank vanish. The skin knits together in seconds, sealing over smooth and unblemished. The silver is purged, burned away by the sheer force of the mating bond.
But the power doesn't stop with him. It slams into me.
CRACK.
My spine arches. A sound tears from my throat that isn't human.
It feels like my bones are being pulverized and reassembled. My jaw aches, a sharp, splitting pain as it reshapes. My muscles tear and reknit instantly, denser, stronger. My vision goes red, then gold, then ultraviolet.
"Jax!" I scream, clutching him. "It hurts! It’s tearing me apart!"
"Let it happen!" he shouts, gripping me tighter, anchoring me as the knot holds us together through the transition. "Let the Wolf in! Don't fight the change,mo coeur."
I climax.
It hits me at the same time the transformation takes hold. The pleasure is a white-hot spear through my center. My walls clamp down on his knot, milking him, drawing everything he has into me.
Jax roars, emptying himself. I feel the pulses of his release, hot and heavy, filling me, seeding the bond deep inside.
The energy surge is too much for the room.
The air pressure drops instantly. The windows rattle in their frames. The jars on the shelves shatter, raining glass.
My body twists. My skin feels like it’s boiling. The power builds in my chest, a scream that needs to get out.
I let it go.
It’s a howl.
It’s not a human scream. It’s a sound of pure, hybrid power—the harmonics of a wolf and the psychic resonance of a vampire screaming in unison.
BOOM.
The shockwave blasts outward from our joined bodies.
The heavy wooden door of the shack is blown off its hinges. It flies twenty feet into the darkness of the swamp, splintering against a cypress tree. The roof groans, shingles stripping away in the wind of our release.
Then, silence.
Heavy, ringing silence.
The lantern has been blown out. The shack is pitch black.
We are still locked together, breathing in ragged, synchronized gasps. The scent in the room is overpowering—ozone, sex, and the terrifying smell of an apex predator that has just been born.
Slowly, in the darkness, eyelids flutter open.
Two pairs of eyes glow in the gloom, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the air.
One pair is solid, burning Gold.
The other is a swirling, nebular Violet, flecked with the same dangerous Gold.
28
MIRANDA
