“You’re right.” My voice is low and gravelly. “I should’ve told you right away that it was a mistake. IwishI could pretend it didn’t happen, princess. Don’t you see how you’re torturing me?”
I thrust my hips against her, and she moans again.
“The thought of you, bare for me in the woods, doing everything I told you to like such a fucking good girl? It’s driving me insane.”
I let go of one wrist and grab her chin, angling her eyes up toward mine. Her mouth parts, her gaze slightly glassy.
“You’ve been an unhealthy fixation from the moment I laid eyes on you,” I continue, voice low. “And now I’ve tasted you and discovered my favorite flavor. You haunt me. You consume me. And it’s sheer agony, because whatever that was, it cannot happen again.”
Her face darkens, and she tries to yank her wrist out of my grip. I don’t let her go. We can’t leave here until sheunderstands.
When she looks back to me, she’s pleading. “Why not, Stark? If that’s how you feel, why not? I really do not have the space for getting my head fucked around by another man. And if it was not absolutely clear, Iwantyou. I’ve been fighting it, worried it was our wolves’ mate bond, but I’m done lying to myself. Sospeak.”
I open my mouth to tell her about Siegrid—how the Sovereign Alpha wants us to get married so that she can proxy-rule the throne. Suddenly, though, it sounds so stupid. Meryn would never let anyone tell her what to fucking do.
Who gives a shit what Siegrid wants?
And it surfaces the true reason I’ve been fighting against this pull.
“I’m wrong for you,” I tell her bluntly. I let go of her wrists, stepping back a few inches. “Meryn, you… you could be the greatest queen that Nocturna has ever seen. You need to be with someone who nurtures the best parts of you. Not someone who pulls you down into the dark and relishes every moment.”
She opens her mouth to argue, so I hold up a hand.
“No. I’m serious. Think of the ruler you want to be. Think about who will be ruling by your side. Do you think the common people or the nobles would ever acceptme? A depraved butcher whose name is whispered in fear? A person who sees you grappling with your power and urges you to seize it, fuck the consequences?”
I watch the emotions play across her face, like clouds across a sky, and charge on.
“You need to be with an equal. Not someone who’s thought of as a monster. It’s better that we stop this now while we still can. Because I can tell, Meryn—I know what it’s like to be ruined. And kissing you tastes like leaping toward destruction. If we keep this going, neither of us will survive the consequences.”
Meryn turns her face away from me then, and I ache at the loss of her heated gaze. Her jaw twitches, and there’s a sheen where tears form in her eyes.
It’s as if a direwolf were tearing out my still-beating heart.
I hate to be the person making her cry when every part of me screams that I’m meant to guard her, mop up her tears. But this is the only way to protect her in the long run.
To protect us both.
Because she will live to regret me, and I don’t know that I’d ever be able to let her go.
She turns back toward me and catches my eye again, tears bright and shining.
“It destroys me that you don’t know your own worth, Stark,” she snarls. “I wish I could go back in time and cut off the hands of every single person who ever hurt you. Everyone who made you believe that you had only one purpose, one kind of value. You are a million times more than what you’ve been told.”
Meryn draws a shaky breath, and I realize I’ve been holding mine, transfixed by her words.
“Besides, if you’re a monster, what am I? If you’re depraved, I am, too, you fucking asshole. You don’t get to claim my worst actions as yours. I make my own choices. And this thing between us?”
She steps in close, reaching her hands up to cup my face. And with her touch comes connection—she opens herself mentally, and it’s faster than ever this time, sliding into that place in our minds.
Our two heartbeats are one, stoking urgency and passion and some other emotion that hurts to look at closely, like the blinding light of the sun.
“What is this, Stark?” comes her voice in my head, her eyes alight with sorrow and wonder.“This isn’t just the mate bond between our wolves, and you know it. You alone are capable of joining with me like this and sharing my power. What are you if not my equal?”
Meryn’s breath is my breath, and I’m drowning in her, pulled under into a sea that I can’t name.
And then we’re interrupted by a harsh shriek.
Meryn startles. It’s a woman in danger—we both know it instinctively.
