I’d never been afraid of pain.
This was not pain.
This was my mind being turned inside out, the world warpedinto scent and sound and instinct until I couldn’t tell where I ended and the monster began.
“Don’t,” someone said. It was Griff. “Tam, don’t?—”
I grabbed him.
My hand shot out like it didn’t belong to me, fingers clamping around his shirt at the collar. I yanked him down toward me with a strength that felt wrong for a girl that was practically half-dead on a med bay cot.
His eyes widened, startled, then softened in that way that always made me want to punch something.
He was being protective right now.
I didn’t need protective.
I bared my teeth at him, lips peeling back in a snarl.
“Mark me,” I rasped.
His jaw clenched. “Tam?—”
I pulled harder, forcing his face closer, forcing him to look at me, toseeme, to see the edges of me fraying.
“Mark me,” I demanded again, and it came out as a snarl.
He still hesitated. I tightened my grip on him and hissed right in his face.
“Mark me, you beta bitch.”
For a heartbeat, the room went dead silent.
Griff’s expression flickered with shock, then fury, then something darker that made the hair on my arms rise even as sweat slicked my skin.
“Careful,” he murmured. “You don’t get to call me that unless you mean it.”
“I mean it,” I breathed, and my voice cracked on the truth. “I’m—” A tremor rippled through me. My vision stuttered. “I’m losing to the lycan venom. I can feel it. Please…”
That last word did it.
Griff’s eyes darkened and he leaned in. For a second he didn’t look like the man who’d watched out for me my whole life.
He looked at me like a predator deciding what to do with his prey.
“I’m here for you, Tam,” he whispered hoarsely.
Then he lowered his mouth to the side of my throat.
I felt his breath first, hot against skin that was already burning. I felt the press of his lips, almost gentle. Then his teeth sank in.
It wasn’t a savage tear. It was controlled. Intentional. A bite meant to mark, not maim.
Pain flared, then spread outward in a rush that made my breath catch in the back of my throat. I gasped, the sound breaking into a strangled moan I hated myself for.
Griff’s hand slid behind my neck, holding me still, keeping me from jerking away as my blood surged and screamed andanswered.
The wolf in me lunged toward him like it had been starving.
