I folded over her and hesitated.
She coughed again, in the final stages of drowning. Blood sprayed over her chin, painting her lips a glossy red. For a second, I swore it glittered silver—shimmering with a sterling hue as if tiny snowflakes swirled in her life-force.
I shook my woozy head, leaned down, and sealed my lips over hers.
I let go of the mouthful I held.
She coughed and fed me a mouthful of hers.
And—
Fatedetonated.
Blood to blood.
Soul to soul.
Power roared through me, through us, fire and ice crashing together in a blinding supernova that tore a scream from my throat.
She tasted like heaven and winter and ruin, flooding every sense at once, shattering me, breaking me,remakingme. Lightning ripped across my tongue, silver and sharp and the best fucking thing I’d ever tasted.
The pain I’d suffered.
The fire I burned with.
The decades of misery and years of torture.
All gone.
Powerhowled.
No longer restrained or contained, it broke every bone in my body and rebuilt me.
Rebuilt her.
The bond we shared unravelled into full force, and everything prior to this felt so weak and tame andmortal.This new shivery awareness felt elemental and unstoppable as her energy bulldozed through me.
I trembled as my sanity blew apart.
I gasped as my body started to heal.
I itched and ached and throbbed and burned, but it was nothing to the awe of feelingher.
I felt her heartbeat stutter before slamming back into furious rhythm.
Felt her lung knitting together.
Felt her spine—bone grinding against bone, realigning, reforming, restoring everything that’d been broken.
I wasn’t prepared.
Wasn’t equipped.
Desire cleaved me in two. Savage desperation to keep her, make her mine, finish what we’d started.
I needed her.
I needed to be inside her, just like my blood was. I needed her to accept the joining, the binding, thelock.
