I slowed just a few feet away from the entrance. I was still so close that the door hadn’t slid back shut.
Suddenly, my legs felt weak, as if they might give out. And my entire body started to itch.
No, not itch…
Burn.
It felt like my clothes were eating me alive. I lived in my self-cleaning jumpsuit, but suddenly I couldn’t get out of it fast enough.
As desperate as I’d been to escape, I found myself stripping naked instead. Even my shoes and socks were too much to bear. I yanked them off my feet.
Only to stop and stare at the sight between my legs.
My sex was coated with something that glinted in the bright light. A warm slick poured out of me in slow, agonizing pulses.
And the not-so-mythical button Diarmuid had found earlier—it was throbbing, as if it had a heartbeat of its own.
W.
T.
P.
E.
The ocean crashed even louder in my ears. And that was when I realized…
The ocean wasn’t in my ears. It was right in front of me. Crashing like something angry and alive into the cliffside I was standing on.
A dim memory from a history class long, long ago.
How Ireland used to be connected by a land bridge to Great Britain.
But for some reason, it still took the original settlers until the Mesolithic Period to arrive there.
“Why?” another student asked my mother.
“Not sure,” my maem admitted. “Perhaps ask the librarian the next time you visit the castle.”
Looking at the ocean, I think I knew why not too many people dared to cross that land bridge.
And why my modern heat control shot had suddenly sent up three ghost emojis.
The memory of that classroom conversation faded as I raised my eyes to the sky. And saw the two moons hanging over the ocean.
The two full moons.
Heat
“Reverence!”
“Dorcasss!”
Two voices broke through the haze of my pain. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed since I realized that I hadn’t shifted, even with the two full moons in the sky because of the onset of my heat.
It was like nothing I’d ever felt before. I ached everywhere. The space between my legs desperately squeezed in and out like something alive—and in the grips of a heart failure.
The knot hadn’t just tightened, it felt like it was trying to devour itself.
