“To claim you?” His fangs grazed my shoulder. Sharp. Promising. “To make you mine forever?”
“Yes. God, yes.”
He drove into me harder. Faster. The orgasm building in my core was different from the others. Deeper. Like it started in my bones and radiated outward. Every nerve was firing. Every cell was singing.
“I love you,” he said against my skin. “I love you, and I’m going to make you mine, and nothing in this universe will ever take you from me.”
“Do it.” I was sobbing. Shaking. So close. “Please, Kallum, do it now.”
His fangs sank into the juncture of my neck and shoulder.
Pain, bright and sharp. Then his saliva flooded the wound, and everything changed. The orgasm that had been building exploded into something beyond physical. I could feel him. Not his body but his essence, pouring into me through the bite. His love. His possession. His absolute, complete claim.
The bond snapped into place.
I was dimly aware of screaming. Of my body convulsing around him. Of Kallum roaring my name as he found his own release. But it was all distant, unimportant compared to the feeling of being claimed. Being changed. Being his.
Darkness crept in from the edges of my vision. My limbs felt heavy, disconnected. The last thing I heard was Kallum’s voice, rough with emotion: “Mine. Finally, completely mine.”
Then nothing.
I dreamed of shadows.
Black lines spreading across my skin like roots seeking water. They burned where they touched, but it wasn’t pain. It was change. I could feel them threading through me, rewriting something fundamental, replacing human code with something older. Something his.
My blood ran hot, then cold, then hot again. I heard my own heartbeat slowing, the rhythm shifting, two beats where there had been one. The double pulse of a Vinduthi heart taking root in my chest.
Colors bloomed behind my closed eyes. Ultraviolet. Infrared. Beautiful, unreal spectrums. My ears filled with sounds I’d never heard before. The hum of the ship’s engines. Footsteps three corridors away. Kallum’s breathing beside me, steady and close.
I dreamed of Kallum. His voice in the darkness, telling me I was safe. His hands on my face, gentle even though I couldn’t see him. His presence, constant and steady, an anchor in the storm of transformation.
I dreamed of home.
Not the farm. Not the fields I’d walked for all those years. Something different. Someone different.
When I woke, the first thing I saw was his face.
KALLUM
She slept for six hours.
I didn’t leave her side. Couldn’t. The bond between us was a living thing now, a quiet pulse beneath my ribs that told me exactly where she was, what she felt. While she slept, it was muted. Steady. Peaceful.
I watched the traceries spread.
They started at the bite mark, black lines branching across her shoulder like frost on glass. Down her arm. Across her collarbone. My sigils. My color. My mark on her skin forever.
Her breathing changed around hour five. Deeper. Slower. Her pulse dropping from human-normal toward something else. The transformation was proceeding fast. Maybe because she’d been so willing. Maybe because we were simply compatible.
When she finally stirred, I felt it before I saw it. A flutter in the bond. Awareness returning. Her eyes opened slowly, finding me immediately.
“Hey,” she said. Her voice was rough.
“Hey yourself.”
She sat up slowly, and I watched her face change. Her head turned toward the door.
“I can hear them,” she said. “In the mess hall. Someone just dropped a plate.” She blinked. “That’s three corridors away.”
