She is the one.
My sternum feels like it splits open from the inside.
A sharp hiss tears its way up my throat. I lock my jaw instantly, biting my own tongue to kill the sound. But it forces me onto one knee, my claws gripping the ridge so hard the stone cracks.
For one single moment, Xiraxis is perfectly clear. I know exactly what I am. I know exactly who she is to me.
Then, the pain hits.
My skin abruptly pulls tight across my chest, like my hide has suddenly shrunk. A ripple rolls under the surface of the skin just below my collarbone, like my own organs are tearing themselves apart and rebuilding themselves.
I drag a harsh, ragged breath through my teeth. I have fought stalkers with a shattered arm, but this crushing, agonizing pressure drops me blind in the dark.
I force the agony down, locking it behind a brutal mental wall lest it reach the rest of the clan.
It takes all I have. The stabbing fire slowly recedes to a dull, constant burn behind my chest.
I stand up slowly, my jaw locking against the tight, unnatural pulling of my own skin.
I am the shield of this clan. I will not show weakness. I will endure the sensation of my chest being roasted from the inside out in silence.
The cold stoneof my high ledge bites into my bare back.
I lie flat, staring blindly up into the pitch-black ceiling. The cavern air is freezing, but my body is radiating an unnatural heat.
The restructuring is a constant, grinding agony in my chest. The skin over my collarbones feels tight enough to tear. My glow has started to pulse erratically in the dark, flaring hot with every wave of pain.
I close my eyes and try to push my focus outward, extending my senses into the dark to search for perimeter breaches.
Instead, the dream drags me under.
I am standing in the center of the dark cavern. It is empty. There is no clan. There is no war. There is only her.
She is standing three paces away. Her thin coverings are gone and she is wrapped in the hides of my bedroll. The edge of the fur slips off her pale shoulder, exposing the long curve of her neck, the sharp line of her collarbone, the soft swell of flesh beneath.
My body moves without a single conscious command. I close the distance in two strides and reach out. Both claws span her narrow waist as I haul her flush against my chest so hard the air punches out of her lungs. Her bare skin burns against my hide. Everywhere. The softness of her pressed tight against the unyielding wall of my body.
My claws drag slowly up her spine, pressing into the delicate notches of bone beneath her skin. She arches into me. Her head falls back, baring the entire length of her throat.
I take it.
My mouth opens hot against the base of her neck. I drag my tongue flat across the rapid hammer of her pulse, tasting salt and the sweet, devastating scent that has been driving me out of my skull for days. I growl against her skin and the vibration makes her entire body shake.
Her small hands move against my chest markings as she pulls herself higher, wrapping both of her legs around my waist, locking her ankles against my back, and the full, grinding pressure of her body settling against mine sends a white-hot bolt of raw need straight through mydra-kir.
I slam her back against the cold stone wall and pin her there with my hips. One broad claw cups the back of her skull, the other grips the bare curve of her thigh, and I rock forward into the heat trapped between us.
She gasps my name, breathless. Her digits rake down my chest, dragging over the raised ridges of my carved markings, and the sensation is so sharp, so blindingly good that I lose sense of time and place.
I want to devour her. I want to pin her flat and drag my tongue down the center of her body until she can’t remember her own name. I want to bury myself so deep inside her that the entire mindspace lights up with it. My fangs scrape the soft, terrifyingly fragile curve where her neck meets her shoulder, my open mouth pressing hard, tasting the salt pooling in the hollow of her collarbone, and the primal, hammering drive to bite down, to sink, tomark.
My eyes snap open.
I drag a ragged, desperate breath into my lungs. My entire body is rigid and there is a deep pulse in my loins that I have never felt there before.
Before I can even process the lingering taste of salt on my tongue, the mindspace explodes.
It hits me hard. Thirty separate consciousnesses, tearing out of sleep simultaneously. Total, collective shock.
