I felt the bond grow taut, blazing through my veins. It was more than needed. More than pleasure. It was everything I’d ever wanted.
Just as I felt her climax, I buried my face against her throat and breathed her in. Her pulse thudded wildly against my lips, and instinct, magic, need blurred together.
My canines slid into her skin.
She shattered, whispering my name as her body quaked.
Her blood coated my tongue, sweet and wild, flooding through me with a power that wasn’t just hers, but ours. The bond snapped tighter, a rush of heat and light tearing through every inch of my soul. Magic flared beneath my skin. Threads ofshadow and death wrapped tightly with the red and gray threads braiding together.
It wasn’t simply a connection or a claim. But a homecoming.
Her gasp against my ear was sharp. Her body arched into mine as if she too felt the way the universe folded in on itself around us so that it was only us. My chest pressed to hers, our hearts locked in the same rhythm, and I came apart, spilling everything I was into our bond. Into her.
But before the last tremor faded, she moved. Her hands grappled with my hair while her mouth went to my neck. Her canines broke my skin, and the world didn’t just shatter this time but detonated. A second wave ripped through me, blinding and hot, my magic roaring in my veins as I came a second time.
Her soul slammed against mine without any barriers left.
Every breath, every heartbeat, every piece of me was hers.
As we held each other, our bodies trembling and souls blazing, I realized this wasn’t the beginning of us. It was the moment everything else caught up, and the world finally made sense. It was the moment I stopped standing alone.
And because of that . . . tomorrow would come.
I felt it waiting beyond the night. The pull of the astral realm. The promise of a reckoning circling closer.
Zaicha would come for her.
And I would be there when she did.
Chapter
Forty-Three
FINLEY
I was not alone.
Brenton stood to my right, Alastor on my other side, their presence more notable against the constant shimmering of the astral realm.
Eiran’s voice echoed across it, his shadows brushing the edges of my boots.
“I was not permitted to walk beside your life,” he said. “You are here now. If you allow it, I would like you to keep returning.”
An offering, so simple it made my chest feel whole.
“I think I’d like that.”
“After this is all done, then?” he asked, his magic starting to rise.
I nodded. “After it’s done.”
The threads of his magic trembled until they spun in a silver blur in front of us.
“Zaicha,” he called out, her name coming out like a command written across existence.
The hairs on my arm stood, but I kept my position between Brenton and Alastor.
Eiran’s magic shimmered into a rift, streams of silver and red whirling through a tunnel of black. The wind howled, tugging on my hair, but I barely felt it.
