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Cedric smiled. “In darkness and in daylight, in peace and in ruin. What you carry, I carry. What you become, we become.”

Her throat tightened. “I love you,” she murmured down the bond.

“I love you so fucking much,” he replied. And then he kissed her.

It was sweet and loving and pure, and Elyria wanted so much more. But a slow-burning heat at her wrist had them breaking apart, looking down to see the cord fully luminous now—a bright ribbon of sunlight wrapped around their hands. It was warm at first, then hot—just for a moment. And then it melted away entirely, sinking beneath their skin.

They released each other’s hands, turning them over to find the cuts on their palms had healed, and their veins had returned to normal. From the outside, they looked exactly as they did before—as though nothing had happened at all.

Inside, though, Elyria’s chest felt like it was about to burst. Raw, unfiltered power was pooling in the cavern behind her ribs, an untamed mix of shadow and wild and light, and it needed release.

She needed release.

Something in the air shifted. She squirmed on the edge of the bed, already seeking friction for the thunderous pulse between her legs. When she lifted her eyes to meet Cedric’s, there was hunger behind his gaze.

She licked her lips, desire pressing in on her from all sides. Would she ever stop wanting him like this? she wondered. Would this feeling ever fade? She’d never felt such a fixation, such all-consuming desire, before. She’d never had someone who made her feel so whole and thoroughly shattered at the same time. And for a second, that made something a lot like guilt bubble up inside her chest. She and Evander were together for so many years. She really had loved him too.

It just wasn’t like this.

“What now?” Cedric asked, his gaze darkening, his eyes trained on Elyria’s mouth.

“Now we fling the door open.” She leaned forward and ran her tongue over his bondmark. His whole body trembled. “Are you ready?”

“I think I’ll die if we don’t,” he murmured, gently pulling her robe aside to reveal her own mark and tracing the crescents with the pad of his thumb.

Elyria whimpered into his hair when he dipped his head to place a kiss there, then gently scraped his teeth against her skin.

“I want all of you, always, Elle,” he said, his voice a low thrum against her heated skin. “Every minute. Every second. I want the feeling of being inside you to be the first thing I experience every morning and the last thing I experience before falling asleep at night. And I want every single fucking soul on the stars-damned continent to know that you are mine, and I am yours, and we will never be taken from each other again.”

39

RECLAMATION

ELYRIA

It happened so fast.

Like he was being fueled by a surge of instinct, driven by something feral and indefensible, Cedric’s teeth closed around Elyria’s bondmark. A euphoric spike of pain seared hot for a singular moment as his teeth pierced her skin. Heat welled along the side of her neck, a sensation that shot straight to her very core as he sucked, drawing her blood into his mouth with a low growl that made the pulsing sensation between her thighs explode in a flurry of desperate need.

There was only her own instinct now, nothing but the desperate need to know what he tasted like, to have his blood on her tongue and have him inside her—in all ways.

To bite back.

Her hand tangled with the soft brown hair at the nape of Cedric’s neck, and Elyria tugged his head away from her. The thinnest rivulet of blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth, and his gold-ringed eyes were wild with desire as their gazes met. For a moment Elyria was transfixed at the sight of her solimaeus already so close to being undone, surrendering to his true nature—wild and free and fae.

And then she was yanking his head to the side, baring his neck and the soul-bonded mark she’d left on him all those months ago. Her mouth tipped up in a smirk before she clamped her teeth down, lights dancing across her vision as the first drops of his sunlit blood hit her tongue.

It was like a drug.

If his bite alone was euphoria, Elyria was sure that an entirely new word needed to be invented for the feeling coursing through her veins now. She could feel him everywhere—singing through her soul, wrapped around the bond between them, brighter than the aurora.

And she knew that for as much as their bond had already felt immutable, for as much as Cedric was already the very personification of her heart outside her body, they had just crossed into entirely new territory together.

She didn’t need to voice what she wanted next—what she needed now.

It was what he needed too.

In a flurry of grabbing arms and tangling legs, of desperate kisses and clashing teeth, Elyria was on her back. The tray holding the silver blade clattered to the floor as Cedric stood over her, robe and towel discarded, his hard cock fisted in his hand.