Beg? Beg for what?She didn’t have the faintest idea, but she knew without a doubt that he was right. She already felt like she was on the brink of begging him to do something, to soothe the growing ache that made the tops of her thighs slick, that made her pulse pound and her nipples tighten.
“And when we leave here,” he continued, “I will mark you as thoroughly as you will mark me,kone.You are not the only one who feels the need to bite.”
It took her clouded mind a moment to catch up. A jolt traveled through her, rattling her very soul. “But you said—”
“That shifters bite their mates?” He rumbled again. Those powerful teeth closed over the thick muscle of her trapezius, biting down just enough to leave indents in her skin.
Josephine’s vision exploded in a sea of sparks as pleasure,needunlike anything she’d felt before burst through her.
“We do,” he finished, releasing his bite. “Iwill.”
She shook in his arms, overwrought with every imaginable feeling, good and terrible. “But youcan’t.You’ll be shipped off to the front as soon as Papa injects you, and then we will never see each other again!”
“It is decided,” he growled. Those strong fingers squeezed her nape, part possession and part censure. “My animal chose and I have long since accepted it, Josephine. You are my mate. I will not be separated from you, come dragonfire or the end of days.”
Her heart soared, and yet she could not surrender to the hope he gave her. Even before she was changed, she had lived her life in shackles. It was a struggle to imagine anything could change, or that freedom could be more than just an abstract concept.
She had no one on which to rely. She had no money. She had no abilities. She had no experience in the world, nor amongst other beings. It was not merely the locks on the doors or the great green waste that kept her prisoner, but her ignorance of how to be a person in the world at all.
Her last escape attempt had gone horribly wrong, and when it was over, Josephine remembered how her mother had looked at her, lips pursed with disgust and eyes bloodshot.
“And what would you have done out there on your own, I wonder?”she’d asked.“Become a whore? Starve to death in the streets? You have no education, no connections, no Coven.”
“I have a Coven,”Josephine had belligerently insisted, though she knew her mother’s response would tear her to pieces.
“You have none. Certainly not mine. Only witches have Covens, and you’re arrant. Worth less than nothing to the family. Your only possible use might be in becoming a bondmate, but who would tie their soul to one as pitiful as you? Who would marry you, breed with you?”She’d lifted her lip and turned away, hand waving in dismissal.“No one. You should be grateful your father has designs on making you his creature. Glory knows I have no use for you.”
Outside of the city, where she might escape into a hive of people and buildings, her father no longer bothered with shackles when she ventured outside the house. Josephine was largely allowed to wander freely — save for the nights of the full moon. After all, where would she go? The wilderness was as much a deterrent to her escape as bars on a window.
She had not the first idea how to survive in the wild. Equally humiliating was her mother’s cruel truth: that she had little more idea of how to survive in the civilized world either.
But it wasn’t about her. Standing in his arms, Josephine realized that it didn’t matter. Even if the shifter abandoned her after it was all done, she couldn’t let her father have his way. It had to stop here. It had to stop with them.
If I do not find a way to free him, he will be given lyssa,she thought, agonized.I can’t allow that, no matter what he says.
She broke out into a cold sweat when she thought of escaping on her own, but for him? That was different, she decided. A hitherto unknown well of courage, of animal ferocity made itself known.
They will not touch him.She sucked in a steadying breath.I can do this.
“I can tell you everything I know,” she offered, speaking quickly, as if she needed to push the words out at top speed before she lost her nerve. “I know all of Papa’s routines. I know where he stores things. If you tell me—”
“You’ll not put yourself in danger for my sake,kone,”he growled. “I need to be freed. That is all you must do. Once I am out of this cell, I will handle your father and that other man.”
“That is the only problem.” She would have turned to glance at the door, but with the shifter’s hand on her nape, all she could do was give him a helpless look. “I can walk freely when it’s not a full moon. I can gather supplies. I can find the keys to your shackles. But I cannot open that door by myself.”
“Why?”
“It’s sigil-lined,” she explained. “And I have no magic.”
The shifter’s brows drew together. “Yes, you do.”
It was her turn to give him a quizzical look. “No, I don’t. My father told me he was trying to open my m-paths when he first injected me with the venom, but that’s not what happened. I’m as useless as I ever was.”
He loomed closer. Running the tip of his crooked nose over the slope of her cheek, the shifter sucked in a deep inhale that rattled with a purr of pure pleasure on its release. His voice dropped to a deep baritone when he replied, “I have a keen nose,kone.I can scent the magic in you just as I can scent the need.”
Her chest rose and fell so fast, she felt lightheaded. She cycled from disbelief to confusion in the span of a heartbeat. “Need?”
“Need.” His prickly beard tickled her skin as he moved his head, angling it so that his lips hovered over hers. For several tantalizing seconds, they shared air that was so thick, it clung to the back of her tongue like honey.
