“That is why I think maybe this is punishment,” he said. “Or judgment. The Goddess let me find you—let me scent you and know what you could be to me—but perhaps she never meant for me to have you fully. Perhaps that’s why I couldn’t shift for so long…why I was trapped in my primal form so long.” He shook his head. “Because I am not worthy of another mate.”
Kiera lifted a hand at once and cupped his cheek, forcing him to look at her.
“No,” she said firmly. “Don’t say that. Don’t you dare.”
He stared at her, startled into silence.
“What happened to your mate was not your fault,” she repeated, more fiercely now. “You didn’t ask for your world to burn. You didn’t ask for the Darklings to come. And you did not kill her.” Her thumb stroked over the hard line of his cheekbone. “Surviving something awful doesn’t make you guilty, Brux. It makes you alive.”
For a moment he only looked at her, and she could see the terrible longing in him—the desperate need to believe her, warring with years of grief and guilt.
“I want to believe you,” he said at last, his voice so rough it was almost a growl. “Gods, Kiera, I want to believe so badly.”
But even as he said it, something in his face began to change.
Kiera saw it happen in real time.
The vivid blue of his eyes flickered and then darkened, the color draining out of them like dye in water, until gold began to creep in around the edges of his irises. His pupils widened too, going strange and feral, and a shiver ran visibly through his big body. The hand at her waist tightened convulsively and his chest rose and fell in a harder rhythm.
“Brux?” she said sharply, sitting up a little straighter in his lap. “What’s wrong?”
He tried to answer, but when he opened his mouth, the words seemed to catch in his throat. His jaw clenched and the tendons stood out in his neck. Then Kiera felt something shift under the hand she still had cupped to his cheek. Not flesh moving normally, but something deeper—bones and muscle and skin rippling beneath her palm in a way that made her blood run cold.
“Oh my God—what’s happening?” she gasped.
“Forgive…me,” he ground out, his voice already roughening into something deeper and less controlled. “I cannot hold this form when I feel so…so…”
He shook his head sharply, as though he was trying to clear it, but the gesture only seemed to make things worse. The angles of his face were changing, growing sharper and longer. The short fur on his jaw and throat thickened before her eyes.
“Gods…” he muttered hoarsely. “Not now. I can’t…shift…now…”
Kiera felt a spike of panic.
No–no, he couldn’t change back now—not when she was just now getting to know the real Brux!
“What can I do to hold you in this form?” she demanded. “Tell me how to help you—anything. Tell me and I’ll do it.”
For a moment, Brux only stared at her, breathing hard. It was clear he was trying to hold onto words and thought and reason at the same time that something more primal was dragging at him from underneath. His chest heaved. His golden eyes shut briefly, as though he was gathering himself by sheer force of will.
Then he managed,
“More…contact…”
Kiera frowned.
“More contact?”
He nodded once—jerkily, as though even that motion cost him something.
“Yes,” he said, the word rough and strained. “Every time you touch me, you pull me back from the edge. From the void.” He swallowed hard and tried again. “Your hands…your scent…your skin.” His voice dropped lower, rougher. “I need more of you.”
Kiera’s heart began to drum in her chest. He was slipping away from her and she couldn’t bear it!
Then she looked at him properly…at the golden eyes…the lengthening angles of his face…the way his whole body seemed tense and unstable, like something caught between two forms and not fully able to settle into either. And beneath all that—beneath the fear and grief and wildness—she saw need.
Not just emotional need–physical need. She saw a terrible, helpless urgency to be close to her in every possible way and all at once, she understood exactly what he needed.
“Oh, I get it,” she said, nodding.
