For the first time.
A mix of bliss and relief flood through my veins, my knees nearly buckling from the sudden, warm rush of it.
Needing to see her face, I adjust my hand until my fingers can cradle beneath her jaw. Her skin is burning despite the remnants of cold water still soaking her, and when I lifther chin,something yanks violently in my chest. No, not something…the bond.
I’ve always known her eyes were going to be the death of me.
They haunted my dreams long before she returned to me—the right one divided in two, light blue and gilded brown. They were always set in a face I could never quite see. I’d wake up from those visions with a hollow ache, feeling like I lost something vital. And I never understood where they came from. Why my own mind insisted on showing me what I couldn’t recognize. I do now. Thalassa. Those dreams were her doing, small messages she tucked into dark corners for me to find when the time was right.
Recently, Noa’s eyes have been my undoing and salvation more times than I can count.
But this…I’ve never seen this before.
Her pupils are blown. The blue half of her right one has stayed the same—glacial on the surface, but with that quiet heat that speaks to the warmth in Noa’s gentle soul. The brown in both irises has vanished completely, though. In its place molten gold spreads through her gaze like liquid sunshine. Both orbs gleam in a way that has nothing to do with the bathroom lighting.
Wolf.
For the first time, her wolf—caged, silenced, unreachable for years—is the one peering back at me.
I breathe out slowly, not daring to move too fast, or at all. It feels like I’m standing in front of something sacred, and if I blink wrong, it’ll disappear before I can claim it.
I let go of her jaw, but I don’t fully sever the contact because every part of me rebukes the idea of letting her go entirely. Tracing her face, I find the center of her forehead and I drag my fingertip down in a soft, careful line. I follow along the bridge of her nose, stopping only when I reach the delicate tip.
“Hello, little mate,” I murmur to the part of Noa I’ve ached to meet but never had the privilege of touching until now. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
The instant the words leave me, my own wolf presses forward, a hard surge against my bones. Every inch of space he’d kept between us since yesterday—his way of punishing me for what I put her through—dissolves like it was never there. He’s present now, keyed in, determined to greet his mate.
Who am I to keep him from her?
I let him through.
One blink, and my vision sharpens, his sight replacing my own.
Noa’s wolf quiets instantly, disgruntled sounds silencing, as if she registers the shift in me and falls still to watch.I bow my head and touch my mouth to the crown of hers, lips and nose pressed to the part in her hair as I breathe her deep into my lungs.Sweet. Grounding. Unmistakably mine. The acrid note from earlier still clings, muted but there. Proof that something inside her still hasn’t fully settled.
The clawing need to sooth it pulls at me. I slide my jaw across her temple, marking her as she marked me. Claiming her in turn.
Mine.
Our scents braid together, familiar and right, filing the now steam-thick shower stall. The moment they settle, a purr rises from my chest. I don’t try to stop it. It moves up from beneath my sternum in a slow, even rumble that shakes through my ribs. It revibrates through the space around us until it feels like the air itself is carrying the sound.
She softens against me, turning her face into where my palm now cradles her cheek. My other hand curls at her side, fitting her against me, chest to chest.
Her body held to mine, it all becomes so painful clear. All those years without her, I wasn’t living. I was enduring, and I hadn’t even known the difference.
When I pull back, her eyes are still molten gold and ice, her wolf still riding her. My thumb swipes back and forth beneath her perfectly imperfect eye, and I ask, “Tell me what you need, sweet one.”
Her lips open like the words are ready, but they catch. She gives a tiny, helpless shake of her head. “I…I’m not sure,” she whispers.
“Close your eyes,” My voice drops without me meaning it to. She follows the instruction immediately. “Listen to your wolf—to your omega instincts. What are they reaching for?”
She wrinkles her nose as she concentrates, and it takes everything in me not to bend down and kiss that spot.
Her eyes snap back open before I can.
There’s nothing gentle about the change in her—it’s like she’s been yanked back into her body by claws and something carnal. The glint in her irises burns brighter than before, and the soft lines of her face tighten.
Suddenly she isn’t just looking at me. She’s hunting me.
