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My fangs ached.

I gave in completely.

Unable to hold myself back anymore, I lowered my snout to her neck, opened my jaws wide, and bit. My fangs sank into the glowing gland.

She screamed.

Power exploded between us.

Light burst from the bite. White and gold. It rushed down her spine, through her limbs, out her fingertips, and lit up the water around us like the moon had fallen into the onsen.

I tasted her blood.

Her magic.

Her soul.

And I felt it.

The bond snapping further into place.

Mine.

Her heartbeat was now inside my chest. Her breaths inside my lungs. Her joy, her fear, her want all flooding into me at once.

And mine flooding into her.

The man.

The kitsune.

The beast.

And Dauphine.

All of us, rising up at once to claim her.

She screamed, “AHHH!”

Surely, it was too much, but she would be used to all of us soon.

And on my arms, the black hands of the curse shuddered. Every one of them. Then, they went still.

And through the bond, I felt it. Deep in her blood, an old darkness stirred. Older than her. Older than her mother and her mother's mother. The curse her ancestor had laid down, coiled in her veins like a snake that had slept for generations.

It woke.

And it began to rise.

Black smoke seeped from her skin. From her shoulders. Her spine. The glowing mark on her neck. It curled up through the steam in thin, ugly threads, and the air turned bitter with the smell of burnt candle wax and old grave dirt.

She gasped. "W-what's happening?"

The black threads of the cursed heart left her chest and twisted above us, knotting together into a shape. A woman's face. Hard-eyed. Furious. Glaring down at us like she still had the right.

I bared my fangs at her.

"She is mine now. Go."