The beast settles in my chest, quiet at last, content. His mate is safe. His enemies are dead. And tonight, the claiming that has been building since I first caught her scent will finally be complete.
I press my lips to her hair and let myself drift toward sleep.
13
IRIS
The hours of rest pass in dreamless dark, my body too exhausted to conjure anything but healing silence.
When my eyes open, stars pepper the blackness beyond the window, and somewhere past the mountain peaks, the moon climbs toward its throne. My ribs protest beneath Signe's careful bandages—not the sharp bite of earlier, but a low throb that reminds me I'm still healing. I push myself upright, muscles stiff but willing, and pad toward the bath.
The stone floor is cool against my bare feet, each step grounding me after hours of restless sleep. I shed the bandages slowly, fingers working loose the knots, and let the fabric fall away. My skin tingles where it's been pressed and bound, released now to breathe. The tub beckons—deep, inviting, steam already curling from its surface where someone must have filled it while I slept.
I lower myself in with a hiss, heat licking up my calves, my thighs, the tender span of my ribs. Water envelops me like a lover's embrace, coaxing tension from muscles I didn't realize I'd clenched. I sink deeper, let my head tip back against the edge, and close my eyes as warmth seeps into bone and sinew, melting away the last remnants of pain.
The water cools around me, and I drift in that space between waking and sleep. Strong hands lift me from the bath—Stellan, wrapping me in soft furs before carrying me to the bed. I barely stir as he lays me down, his fingers brushing damp hair from my face. Sleep pulls me under before I can open my eyes.
He’s standing at the door when I wake, his hair pushed back from his face. The blood is gone from his skin, scrubbed away during the hours I slept, but nothing can wash the predator from his eyes. He watches me with a patience that burns, a hunger held on the thinnest leash.
"It's time," he says.
Two words. They settle into my chest and spark something that feels like destiny catching flame.
A simple white dress lies draped across the foot of the bed, fabric so thin it borders on transparent. Someone brought it while I slept, laid it there for this moment. I rise from the furs and pull it over my head, the soft silk whispering against my skin. Nothing beneath. Nothing to delay what comes next.
Stellan's gaze travels down my body as the fabric settles, and the heat in his eyes makes my breath catch. He extends his hand without a word, and I take it.
He leads me through corridors I have walked a dozen times, out a side gate I never noticed, along a path that winds up the mountainside behind the fortress. The cold bites at my bare arms, but I barely feel it. Heat builds beneath my skin with every step, anticipation and nerves tangling until I cannot tell them apart.
The Bonding Circle emerges from the darkness like something conjured from ancient memory. Standing stones rise from the frozen earth, their surfaces carved with runes that predate the keep by centuries. An altar of rough-hewn granite waits at the center, covered in furs that look soft even from a distance. Heat radiates from within the circle itself, as ifthe stones trap summer against the winter night—a pocket of warmth that defies the frost beyond. And beyond it all, the moon finally crests the eastern peaks, spilling silver light across the sacred ground.
Stellan releases my hand at the edge of the circle. He walks forward without looking back, moving between the standing stones with the certainty of a man who has performed this ritual in his mind a thousand times. When he reaches the altar, he turns to face me, and the moonlight catches his eyes and turns them to molten silver.
He waits. The choice is mine.
I know what I am choosing. The bite. The conversion. The bond that can never be broken, not by distance or time or death itself. After tonight, I will never be human again. I will be wolf. I will be his... and he will be mine.
Standing here in the moonlight, watching him wait for my decision at the center of the circle, I have never wanted anything more.
We are alone. He dismissed the pack, refused the traditional witnesses, insisted that this moment belong only to us. The wolves who would normally gather to witness an alpha claim his luna are conspicuously absent, and the silence that fills the circle is broken only by the whisper of wind through the standing stones.
My bare feet carry me along the path between the monoliths, each step bringing me closer to the altar. The only thing that matters is the man waiting for me, his stillness more predatory than any movement could be.
I stop an arm's length from him. Close enough to touch. Close enough to feel the heat radiating off his skin despite the freezing air.
"Last chance to run," he says, his voice rough with restrained need.
"I'm done running."
"You understand what the bite means?" His hands clench at his sides like he is physically restraining himself from reaching for me. "You will change. Your humanity?—"
"My humanity was an accident of birth." I close the distance between us and press my palm flat against his chest, feeling his heart pound beneath my fingers. "This is a choice. I choose you."
His control shatters.
He surges forward and captures my mouth in a kiss that steals my breath and scatters my thoughts like leaves in a storm. His hands settle on my waist, my hips, the curve of my spine. He touches me like he is mapping territory he intends to claim, like every inch of my skin is a conquest waiting to be won. The kiss deepens until I cannot tell where my breath ends and his begins, until the boundaries between us blur and dissolve and reform into something new.
His fingers find the ties at my shoulders without breaking the kiss, working them loose with practiced ease. The silk slides down my body and pools at my feet, leaving me bare in the moonlight. The cold air raises goosebumps across my skin, but his hands follow immediately, chasing the chill away with heat that borders on fever. He cups my breasts, thumbs brushing across my nipples until they peak and ache, then trails lower to grip my hips and pull me flush against him.
