Themancouldn’t fathom it either. Who would he be if he could no longer shift?
The very idea had made his skin crawl before. Now, faced with the very real possibility, his stomach threatened to purge itself on the tile floor.
He’d only just swallowed the rising bile when the door to his cell was opened.
There she is.
All at once, the tumult inside him died away. What was left was the familiar wonder he experienced every time he looked at his lovely wife, with her dark hair and striking eyes. He was attuned to her rapid breathing, the scent of her skin and fear.
Her eyes were huge and gleaming with tears. Never in all his life had he seen an expression of such profound pain as when Josephine gazed at him from the doorway.
He’d vowed to her that he would have her bite, no matter the consequences, and he’d meant it then.
That conviction paled in comparison to what he felt at that moment.
The bear settled into perfect stillness in the back of his mind. He wasn’t a sophisticated creature, but he understood enough.
A shifter only chose a mate once, and the loyalty to them went beyond vows, beyond the desire to procreate and form a pack. It was a connection of the soul — immeasurable, utterly unique, and irreplaceable. The bear accepted that bond the moment she laid her hands on him that first time, and in so doing, it also accepted the fact that it would die to protect her.
If protecting his mate meant losing his life, then really, it wasn’t such a terrible trade. She was worth it. She was worth a thousand of his lives.
So he didn’t fight it, though he could have. At any moment, he could have burst from his shackles, shifted, and eviscerated the glamoured guards. But in the tiny space of the cell, outnumbered as they were, that would have put Josephine at tremendous risk.
Instead, Otto felt a blanket of calm descend on him as he silently encouraged his mate to come to him. If this was it, then he was determined to take her bite on his terms. He would make it aboutthem.He would enjoy it, consequences be damned.
It took everything in him not to clasp her to him as she sank her hot little fangs into his throat. His erection strained against his thin pants, painful and throbbing, with the pinch of her teeth. Stars exploded in front of him when a flood of warmth bloomed from the tiny wound.
Fuck,he thought, battling the urge to bear her down onto the floor and bury himself between her thighs. The need to sink his own teeth into her throat was a screaming instinct that nearly drowned out everything else, even their audience.
Euphoria set in, muddling that pounding need. Tingles spread through him as his mate’s little bite went pleasantly numb. He could still feel her as she licked the wound, pressing the softest, loving kisses there, but there was no pain. In fact, as the seconds ticked by, he began to feel a tiny bitdrunk.
The thought that her bite was the best feeling in the world had barely drifted through his hazy mind before the warm tingles morphed into heat. In what felt like the span of a heartbeat, he was on fire.
His muscles seized. Otto could do nothing as Josephine was dragged away, howling with rage. He collapsed onto the floor as spasms wracked his body. His lungs burned as they, too, shriveled. He coughed reflexively, desperate for air, and a spray of bloody foam covered the tile in front of him.
Everything — every sinew, every nerve, every follicle — was agony.
Otto was only distantly aware of the cell door closing, of the screams and commotion outside. He could only focus on how he writhed on the floor, the way his eyes burned as if seared by a naked flame, and the roaring of the bear in his mind.
Fight!the bear bellowed.Get up! Protect our mate!
He couldn’t get up. He couldn’t even think. There was no room for anything more than pure endurance as the flames licked up from the inside out, consuming the man until he was naught but cinders on the cell floor.
And then, as if some force had dumped water on those flames, the heat died.
Otto curled into a ball on the cold, blood-speckled floor and retched until there was nothing left in him. His ears were blocked with his own labored breathing, the rush of blood, such that he couldn’t hear anything that happened outside of his cell — until his mate’s scream penetrated the fog.
Josephine was in trouble. She needed him. She was fighting on the other side of that door while he lay prone, as weak as a cub. Desperation was enough to see him up onto his hands and knees, but no further.
He willed himself to shift. Nothing happened.
Otto retched again, this time from grief as he registered the silence in his mind. Was it true, then? Was his bear dead? It did notfeelas though a part of him had died, but then why was it so hard to shift? Where was—
The sounds of fighting reached him just as the scent of coppery blood did.
Fight!he thought.You aren’t dead! Fight, you stubborn fucking animal!
Otto let loose a roar of fury as he clawed at the tile. He would not give in. He wouldnotallow the bear to die — not now, after everything, after so many years of violence, after finding their mate and being so fucking close to a future they hadn’t dared to hope for.
