But my body moves before I can even think. I sway forward, and so does he, our foreheads pressing together like magnets finding north. His ragged breath is warm as it fans over my skin. My pulse roars in my ears. For a heartbeat, neither of us moves. I feel like I’ve grown roots and joined the forest.
The tension around our hands eases just as I become fully aware of it. We both jerk back at the same time, stumbling apart like we’ve been burned. The altar is just stone again. The forest is just trees. The air smells like damp earth.
And yet…a warmth lingers on my wrist. I shove my sleeve up, fingers shaking. A band of ink curls around my skin—swirling, intricate, like the runes from the altar. It looks like a tattoo, except that the swirls actually move on my skin. My stomach drops and my brain stutters to a halt.
“What the fuck?” The words scrape out of me.
Rowan’s eyes snap to mine, wide with shock. He yanks his own sleeve up. A matching band swirls there, dark against his skin.
“I don’t think that was a simple activation,” I say weakly. It’s obvious that what we just did was far more, but I can’t think of anything else to say.
His throat works as he swallows. “No,” he says, voice rough. “I think it might’ve been a…a binding.”
Three
Rowan
Fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
Fuck.
Four
Rowan
“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” I say, tension radiating through my body as I try to rein in the panic coursing through me. “I know someone who can help us figure out…” I trail off. I’m at a complete and utter loss for words.
What have we just done?
God, I feel like a fucking idiot right now. I was so sure of what I was doing and now I’ve…I’ve bound my student to me. It’s unacceptable. This is the biggest fuck up of all fuck ups.
“Who?” asks Norah, and when I look at her, my heart leaps into my throat. Now, this is nothing new. I’ve had…I don’t know. A crush? An infatuation? Feelings? Some combination of all of the above? Whatever it is, it’s been there since Norah joined the archaeology program at Cambridge in the fall.
But the sight of her in this moment seems to undo me even more. Her cheeks are flushed the prettiest shade of pink I’ve ever seen, and the breeze has loosened a few stray wispy tendrils of golden hair from her long braid.
“Maeve, the woman you met yesterday. There’s more to her than just local history,” I say, and Norah nods, biting her lower lip. I stare at where her teeth dig into the soft, supple looking flesh, hunger prowling through my veins.
“Okay, yeah, let’s uh…go talk to Maeve,” she says, and I can see how desperately she’s trying to act normal. She looks up at me, those sweet brown eyes crashing into mine, and it’s like time stops for a moment.
She’s so achingly beautiful. So sweet and warm and…
And my student. Probably twenty years younger than me.
No, I tell myself, not for the first time when it comes to Norah.
The forest hums around us as we walk, branches swaying like lazy sentinels in the morning breeze. My boots sink into damp earth, each step deliberate, measured—anything to keep my mind off the ink curling across my wrist. It pulses with a tingling heat, making me acutely aware of it and what it represents.
Norah walks beside me, close enough that her shoulder brushes my arm when the path narrows. The contact sends a jolt through me, sharp and electric. I clench my jaw. Mine. The word slams into my skull, unbidden, possessive. My traitorous cock twitches, and I force my gaze forward, willing the reaction away.
She doesn’t speak. Neither do I, and the silence stretches between us. Her fingers twitch at her sides, and I wonder if she’s fighting the urge to reach for me. I wonder, because I’m fighting the same damn thing. It’s as though the bond has made me even more attuned to her than I usually am. It’s taken something that was already there and turned the dial up to eleven.
A twig snaps under my boot. Norah flinches, then lets out a breathy laugh, her nerves palpable. “This is… a lot.”
I exhale slowly. “It is.”
The mark on my wrist seems to grow warmer. I flex my fingers, as if that’ll shake the sensation loose. It doesn’t. Instead,the heat spreads, creeping up my forearm, settling low in my gut. Lower.
