“I can feel her clench around me, brother,” Liam gritted out, his voice breaking with the effort of holding back.“She’s close.”
Jacob hissed as Willow hollowed her cheeks, her gray eyes locking onto his.She moaned around him, the vibration shooting fire through his cock straight to his spine.His hips bucked harder than he meant them to, but Willow took it, her nails digging into his thigh as she rode Liam with a frantic rhythm.
“Take what you need, love,” Jacob panted, threading his fingers through her wet hair, guiding her pace.“Gods, you’re perfect.Our perfect little witch.”
Liam’s growl deepened, his hips snapping up into Willow as her body bowed, breaking apart between them.She screamed against Jacob’s cock, the sound muffled but vibrating through him and it pushed him right to the edge.He spilled into her mouth with a harsh cry, his entire body shaking with the force of it.
Willow swallowed him down like salvation, her body still trembling on Liam’s cock.Liam shouted her name, thrust once more and then shuddered hard as he poured into her, pulling her tight to his chest as if he could anchor her there forever.
The three of them collapsed into the spray, tangled and trembling.Jacob gathered Willow close, kissing her wet hair, her temple, her mouth.Liam’s arms circled them both, his breath rough against their ears.
“We love you,” Jacob whispered fiercely, as if sheer force could brand the words into her soul.“No curse, no warlock, no prophecy will ever change that.”
Liam pressed his forehead to Willow’s shoulder.“No matter what happens, we’ll survive tonight.And when the sun rises, we’ll still be yours.”
Willow choked on a sob, clinging to them both.“I choose you.I’ll always choose you.”
The bond surged hot and bright inside Jacob, like molten steel reforged.He wanted to believe it would be enough—that love, and fate and sheer stubbornness could undo centuries of darkness.
But as dawn crept closer, reality reminded them that the curse wasn’t broken yet.
The pull came slowly, inexorably, like a tide they couldn’t fight.Their forms shimmered, dissolved, until all that remained of them lay inked across Willow’s stomach once more.
She stood beneath the spray of the shower, her shoulders shaking as silent tears slipped down her cheeks.She pressed both palms over her tattoo, over them, whispering broken promises to the steam-filled air.
Inside the bond, Jacob and Liam whispered back, their voices wrapping around her sorrow like arms she could no longer feel.
“We’re here, sweet.Always here.Hold on for us.”
****
The sanctum was silentbut for the faint crackle of candlelight and the low thrum of power vibrating in the air.Marcus stood at the center of it all, a predator in his den and smiled at the runes he had carved into the stone floor.Each mark glowed faintly, pulsing in rhythm with his own heartbeat.The power was building, thick and heady, the promise of what was to come humming through his veins.
The new moon was close.With it, the veil between realms thinned and he could draw more freely from the source he had been leeching since the beginning: the Moon Goddess herself.The very being who had cursed the world with abominations—shifters—was the font of his strength.He had bled her dry over centuries, siphoning what she had once gifted to wolves and twisting it for himself.Her cries had long since faded, replaced by a hollow silence that only fueled his hunger for more.
At dusk, it would all end.The wolves—those pathetic remnants of a line he should have eradicated long ago—would fall, their souls ripped from the tether Saffron Burrows had so foolishly tried to weave.He could almost taste it: the moment their bodies broke, their spirits extinguished forever, leaving nothing but silence where once there had been snarling, loyalty and love.Their mate would watch, broken and then she would come to him, bound by prophecy and despair.
Marcus spread his arms wide, letting the dark energy swirl around him.His laughter echoed against the stone walls.“All of it comes together tonight.The curse holds, the council waits and the world will finally know the shape of its master.”
He walked to the altar, pressing his palm flat to its cold surface.The stone drank from him instantly, drawing a thin line of blood from his hand to feed the symbols etched into it.They flared red, alive, hungry.He had been preparing for this for centuries—centuries of patience, of planning, of bending time and blood to his will.The council had promised him everything if he delivered the end of the shifters and tonight, he would call them forth from the bones of the past.His brethren, his equals, bound to him in purpose and in power.
“No man can kill me,” Marcus whispered, savoring the words of his curse.“No wolf can stand against me.The goddess herself is bound beneath my hand.And when the wolves are gone, when her spawn are ashes, there will be nothing left to challenge me.”
His mind lingered, as it always did, on Willow.Sweet, stubborn Willow.Fate had marked her, just as it had marked Libby centuries before and yet she resisted him with the same foolishness.Did she not see?Did she not understand that she was meant to be his?He would not only break her body, but her spirit, bending her until she knelt willingly.And when she finally did, the rush of her surrender would be sweeter than any victory he had ever known.
His lips curved in a smile both cruel and anticipatory.“You cannot escape me, my darling.Not in this life, not in any other.You belong to me.You always have.”
The candles guttered as though bowing to him, their flames bending inward toward his form.The shadows thickened and in them Marcus saw the shapes of his council—their features blurred by centuries, but their hunger clear.They would walk again soon, restored by his hand, ready to rule beside him.And the world...the world would kneel.
He lifted his head, eyes blazing with stolen light and whispered into the silence, “One final act.One last dusk.And then all will be mine.”
