"Sit," Iris commands, pointing to the chair by the fire.
I sit. I am not certain I could refuse her anything in this moment, not when she is looking at me like I am something precious rather than something terrible.
She disappears into the bathing chamber and returns with a basin of warm water and clean cloths. Then she kneels at my feet and begins to wash the blood from my hands.
The intimacy of the act undoes me more thoroughly than the battle ever could. Her fingers are gentle as they work between mine, careful around the torn nails and split knuckles,methodical as they strip away the evidence of violence I committed. The water turns red almost immediately. She empties it and refills it without comment, returning to her task with quiet determination.
"You fought," I say. It is not a question. I can see the evidence of it in her wounds, smell the blood of wolves that is not hers clinging to her skin.
"They came for me." She does not look up from her work. "Korren sent a strike team to take me while you were at the canyon. They thought they would find a helpless prize hiding in a locked room."
"And instead?"
"Instead they found the luna of the Northern Pack with a sword in her hand, warriors at her back, and no intention of being anyone's pawn." She glances up, and the ghost of a smile crosses her face. "Dag armed me from the forge. I organized the defenders. We held the courtyard until the attack broke."
Pride swells in my chest, tangled with residual fury at the thought of her in danger and a possessive satisfaction that she claimed the title I gave her. Luna. My luna. Standing at the front lines and fighting for the pack I have spent fifteen years protecting.
"How many did you kill?"
"Enough." She returns her attention to my hands, working the cloth between my fingers. "The first one was the hardest. After that, training took over. Helena's voice in my head, telling me where to cut and how to move."
"And your wounds?"
"Shallow." She shrugs, then winces at the motion. "Claws across my ribs. Signe stitched them while we waited for word from the battle."
I reach out and tilt her chin up, forcing her to meet my eyes. "I felt it. Through the bond. I felt you bleed."
"I know." She holds my gaze without flinching. "I felt you too. When you were hurt. And I felt it when you killed him. The fury. The satisfaction." Her voice drops. "The pleasure you took in making him suffer."
She should be horrified. She should be repulsed by the knowledge that I enjoyed destroying another living creature, that I drew out his death deliberately, that I wanted him to suffer before the end. Instead, she leans into my touch, her cheek warm against my palm.
This is not pretense. Not survival instinct forcing acceptance of something that disgusts her. She means it. She is glad I made him suffer.
"Iris." Her name comes out rough, hungry.
"The bond," she says, cutting me off before I can continue. "The full claiming. I want it."
My hand tightens on her jaw. "You understand what that means. The bite. The conversion. You'll become wolf. You'll be bound to me in ways that can never be undone."
"I know." She rises from her knees and stands before me, bloody and bruised and utterly certain. "I chose to stay when I could have hidden. I chose to fight when I could have cowered. I choose you, Stellan. All of you. The alpha and the beast and whatever darkness lives beneath." She reaches out and presses her palm flat against my chest, over my heart. "Tonight. I want to be yours completely."
I surge to my feet and pull her against me, crushing my mouth to hers in a kiss that tastes of blood and victory and desperate, aching need. She opens for me immediately, her arms winding around my neck, her body molding against mine like she was made to fit there. The partial bond thrums between us, hungry for completion, straining toward the moment when it will become something unbreakable.
I force myself to pull back, to rest my forehead against hers, to breathe through the overwhelming need to take her right now, right here, consequences be damned.
"Tonight," I promise. "But first, we rest. We eat. We let Signe check your wounds and mine." I cup her face in my hands and hold her gaze. "When I claim you, I want us both at full strength. I want you to feel everything. Remember everything. I want the moment I make you mine to be seared into your memory for the rest of our lives."
She shivers against me, and I smell the spike of arousal that floods through her at my words. Good. Let her spend the day anticipating what comes tonight. Let the waiting sharpen the pleasure until she is as desperate for completion as I am.
"Rest," she agrees, though her voice is unsteady. "But tonight?—"
"Tonight, I make you wolf." I press a kiss to her forehead, soft and reverent, a promise of the tenderness I will show her alongside the intensity. "Tonight, the bond completes."
She nods and lets me lead her to the bed, where we collapse together amid the furs. I pull her against my chest and breathe in the scent of her, blood and sweat and the sweetness of omega that has become as necessary to me as air. Her breathing slows as exhaustion claims her, and within minutes she is asleep in my arms.
I do not sleep. I lie in the fading light and listen to her breathe and think about what the night will bring. The bite that will convert her. The knot that will lock us together. The bond that will fuse our souls into something neither of us can survive alone.
She chose this. She chose me. And in a few hours, I will give her everything I have been holding back since the moment she walked into my great hall with fire in her eyes and defiance in her spine.
