Page 464 of Eight of Swords, Part Two

‘The thing happened.’

‘You morphed?’

‘No. But the fucking thing happened anyway.’

Her voice lowered to a private whisper, she asks, ‘Your heat?’

‘Don’t call it that. It’s not… that’s not what it was. The men around me were crazed. They started killing each other to win me,’ he explains with disgust. ‘My body was failing after the fall and the loss. It went into a spiral of needing something to replace the bond.’

‘Your body interpreted the loss of the Knot as catastrophic severance and triggered an emergency mating drive. It was like before?’

She’s referring to an incident two years prior, when Riley stole out of the Tower two weeks before his stupid fucking “heat”, as she calls it, kicked in around the third month. He was attacked and, in a panic, his body did what it did last night, only on a much smaller scale.

‘It affected everyone.’

‘Were you claimed?’

‘No. Vasily found me. He kept me safe.’

‘Then what is this?’ she asks, indicating the bite.

‘I knew my body needed something to calm down. It was either sex or a bite, so…’

‘So he claimed you with a bite.’

‘He made me bite him first.’

‘Oh, even better,’ she drones, unimpressed. ‘A mutual bond, then.’

‘It’s not a bond. I just needed something to get through it.’

‘You would have been better served letting him—’

‘You know what? I don’t need this from you,’ he snaps, moving away. ‘Maybe if you’d told me more about this fucking disease I have, I wouldn’t have needed something so pathetic in the first place!’

‘It’s not a disease. This is who you are.’

‘Fucked-up, broken and useless?’

‘Wildwanes need family. Your biology was simply trying to—’

‘My fucking biology almost got me raped! Words cannot express how much I hate what I am, and before you take offence, remember that I’m not like you or Mimi or any other Wildwane. I don’t have your power or your control. This thing has only ever mutilated me. And for the record, I threw myself at him,’ he adds with a bitter laugh, ‘and he said no.’

‘Having touched you, he still refused?’

‘Yes.’

‘Impressive.’

‘No shit. I was in his fucking lap, Lee.’

She blinks. ‘You have never called me that.’

‘I guess my days of trying to impress you are done.’

‘That was never necessary.’ She takes a slow, thoughtful breath. ‘You must break the bond.’

‘I don’t know how. Do you?’