CHAPTER TWO
VAHYN
The claiming mark burned like a brand over his heart.
Vahyn had felt pain before—seven years of living with a demon's death-curse had taught him intimacy with agony—but this was different. This was alive. The mark pulsed with each beat of his heart, sending tendrils of foreign magic through his veins like black ink in water.
He could feel her. The Blackbriar witch. Her presence sat in his chest like a second heartbeat, impossible to ignore.
And his wolf—gods, his wolf was screaming.
MATE. OURS. CLAIM HER. PROTECT HER. MATE MATE MATE—
The litany had started the moment their blood touched, and it hadn't stopped. His wolf didn't care that she'd tried to kill him. Didn't care that she was Conclave, that she was cursed, that she was probably the most dangerous woman he'd ever met.
It only cared that she was theirs.
Which was impossible.
Shifters didn't mate outside their species. The wolf chose its own kind—pack, clan, bloodline. A witch, even a bloodwitch, should have registered as other. Fascinating perhaps, attractive maybe, but not mate.
Yet here his wolf was, trying to claw its way to the surface, desperate to shift and claim her properly. To bite, to mark, to make the bond permanent in the way of their kind.
If he let it, she'd be dead in seconds. His wolf was too strong, too primal. A human body—even a witch's body—couldn't survive an alpha's claiming bite.
So he held the wolf down with every scrap of will he possessed, even as the demons charged.
The Blackbriar—Orlaith, his mind supplied, her name bleeding through the bond—stepped away from him. Her movements were fluid, efficient. A warrior's economy of motion.
Her bare hand came up, still ungloved from when she'd tried to drain him. The other hand drew a small knife from somewhere in her leather armor.
She dragged the blade across her palm without hesitation.
Blood welled up, dark and thick. It should have been red. Instead, it was nearly black, saturated with death magic so concentrated he could smell it even in human form.
The lead demon lunged for her, all teeth and claws and sulfurous breath.
She caught it mid-leap.
Her bloody palm slammed into its face, and the creature's shriek cut off like a severed string. It convulsed once, twice—and then simply collapsed, its body hitting the stone floor with a wet, final sound.
Dead. Drained to a husk in the space between heartbeats.
The other demons hesitated.
Vahyn didn't.
He let the shift take him halfway—the most dangerous form, caught between man and wolf. His bones cracked and reformed, muscles expanding, claws erupting from his fingertips. His jaw elongated, teeth sharpening to points designed for tearing.
The berserker rage rose with the shift, hot and welcome. It drowned out the claiming bond's incessant pull, the wolf's maddened howling, the death-curse's constant ache.
In battle, he could forget he was dying.
In battle, he could just be.
He hit the nearest demon like an avalanche, claws sinking into corrupted flesh. It screamed—they always screamed—and he ripped sideways, opening it from shoulder to hip. Black ichor sprayed across the temple floor.
Behind him, he heard Orlaith's quick breathing, the whisper of her boots on stone. The claiming bond let him track her position without looking: she was moving right, circling, putting the altar between herself and the remaining demons.
Smart. Use the terrain.
A demon tried to flank him. He spun, faster than something his size should be able to move, and his clawed hand closed around its throat. He squeezed, felt the vertebrae separate, and threw the body into the demon behind it.
They went down in a tangle of limbs and screeching.
Three left.
No—two.
Orlaith had killed another. He caught a glimpse of her in his peripheral vision: she was magnificent and terrible, her curse made weapon. Every touch was death. Every drop of her blood was poison.
The demons were learning to fear her.
Good.
The largest of the remaining demons—nearly seven feet of scaled muscle and burning eyes—fixed its attention on Vahyn. It circled slowly, intelligently. Not a mindless lesser demon, then. This one had enough presence to think, to assess threats.
It saw a dying shifter, half-transformed and cursed. It probably thought him easy prey.
It was wrong.
Vahyn smiled, feeling his elongated fangs press against his lower lip. "Come on, then."
The demon lunged.
Vahyn met it head-on. They collided in the center of the chamber, the impact shaking dust from the ancient stones. Claws raked his ribs—he felt skin tear, blood flow. The pain was distant, unimportant.
He got both hands around the demon's skull and twisted.
The crack echoed through the temple like a rifle shot.
The body dropped.
Silence fell, broken only by his harsh breathing and the drip-drip-drip of blood on stone.
Vahyn straightened slowly, feeling the shift recede. His bones cracked back into human configuration, claws retracting, fangs shrinking. The berserker rage drained away like water through cupped hands, leaving only exhaustion and pain behind.
The death-curse flared, punishing him for the expenditure of energy. Black veins crawled further down his neck, reaching toward his chest like grasping fingers. His blind eye throbbed, the curse-scar burning.
He had days left now. Maybe a week if he was lucky.
The claiming mark pulsed in counterpoint to the curse, the two magics warring inside his body. He could feel them fighting for dominance: the demon's death-curse trying to kill him, the bloodwitch's claiming trying to drain him.
He was being torn apart from the inside.
Good, he thought with bitter humor. At least I'll die interesting.
"You're insane."
He turned. Orlaith stood ten feet away, blood—demon and her own—staining her hands and forearms. Her dark eyes were wide, fixed on him with something between horror and reluctant admiration.
"You just went berserker against demons while carrying a death-curse," she continued. "You should have collapsed. Should have let the curse eat you. Instead you—" She gestured at the carnage surrounding them. "What the hell are you?"
"Greymaw," he said simply. As if that explained everything.
It did, for those who knew the old clans.
She stared at him for a long moment. Then, unexpectedly, she laughed. The sound was harsh, scraping, edged with hysteria.
"Greymaw," she repeated. "Of course. The berserker clan.
The ones who went mad in battle and loved it.
" She dragged her bloody hand through her hair, leaving dark streaks.
"I tried to assassinate a berserker. While he was dying of a demon curse.
After accidentally claiming him as mate. I've reached new heights of stupidity."
Despite everything—the pain, the dying, the impossible bond—Vahyn felt his lips twitch. "Mate is... not the term I'd use."
"No?" She cocked her head, and he saw the moment she felt it too: the claiming bond, pulling tight between them like a rope. "Then what would you call this?"
"A disaster."
"That, we agree on."
She moved to one of the alcoves and retrieved her glove from where it had fallen during the fight. She pulled it on with sharp, angry movements, covering the deadly skin beneath leather.
Vahyn watched her, cataloging details his wolf insisted were important: the efficient way she moved, the scars visible at her collar and wrists, the rigid control she maintained even now. She was a weapon. Every inch of her had been honed for killing.
He recognized it because he'd done the same to himself.
"The demons came because of the claiming," she said, not looking at him. "The magical surge. It's like a beacon to anything hunting in the area."
"I know."
"More will come."
"I know that too."
She turned then, meeting his eyes. "Then you know we can't stay here."
The claiming bond pulled at his chest, agreeing. Separation would be agony now—they'd discovered that when she'd tried to back away during the fight and they'd both gasped at the sudden pain. The bond wanted them close. Wanted them together.
A mile, he estimated. They could separate by perhaps a mile before the bond started hurting them. Any further, and the pain would drop them both.
"Where do you suggest we go?" he asked. "Back to your Conclave masters?"
Her expression hardened. "They'll execute me the moment they realize I've claimed someone. Unsanctioned bonding is forbidden—makes us too powerful, too dangerous. They'll kill us both and call it justice."
"Then we're agreed. Not the Conclave."
"Not anywhere civilized," she added. "The claiming mark is visible. Anyone who sees it will know what we've done."
Vahyn's hand moved unconsciously to his chest, to the place where her mark burned. He could feel the raised edges of it, brand-hot against his palm.
"I have a place," he heard himself say. "Three days north. The old Greymaw stronghold."
"The one where your entire clan was slaughtered?"
The bluntness should have angered him. Instead, he appreciated it. No false sympathy. No careful dancing around the truth.
"Yes," he said. "Dun Greymaw. The ruins are still warded—my ancestors' magic lingers. It's the one place the death-curse weakens enough that I can... function."
She studied him with those dark, knowing eyes. "And you think the wards will hide us from the Conclave? From the demons?"
"I think," he said carefully, "that it's the only place I know where we might survive long enough to break this bond before it kills us both."
The words hung between them.
Break the bond. Sever the claiming. Go their separate ways—she to her lonely death by madness, he to his slightly-less-lonely death by curse.
It was the logical choice.
So why did his wolf snarl in protest at the very idea?
Orlaith's jaw tightened. "Three days travel. On foot?"
"There's a horse. Outside, hidden in the trees. I didn't want it attracting attention."
"Smart." She glanced around the temple, at the demon corpses already beginning to decay into sulfurous ash. "We should move. Now. Before more come."
She was right. The magical signature of the claiming would draw every demon and curse-sensitive creature for miles. They needed to disappear, and quickly.
But first—
Vahyn moved to where her poisoned blade had fallen during the fight. He picked it up carefully, studying the dark coating on the edge. Her blood, mixed with venom and nightshade. It would have killed him. Probably within minutes.
A clean death. Cleaner than the claiming, certainly cleaner than the curse.
He should be angry with her for trying. Should hate her for the mark she'd burned into his skin.
Instead, he just felt... tired.
"Here." He offered her the blade, hilt-first.
She took it warily, as if expecting a trick. When he simply stepped back, her eyebrows rose fractionally.
"You're giving me back the weapon I tried to kill you with."
"You'll try again eventually," he said. "Better you have a proper blade when you do."
"That's..." She shook her head. "You really are insane."
"Greymaw," he repeated, as if it were answer enough.
She cleaned the blade on a demon corpse and sheathed it with practiced ease. Then she looked at him—really looked, her death-sight flickering to life behind her eyes. He felt the weight of that gaze, seeing past flesh to the curses eating him from inside.
"You're not going to make it three days," she said quietly. "The claiming and the death-curse are fighting each other. Tearing you apart. You'll be dead before we reach your stronghold."
He knew. He could feel it—the magic churning in his chest, consuming itself, consuming him.
But the alternative was staying here, dying in this forgotten temple with a woman who'd tried to murder him and accidentally bound herself to him instead.
At least at Dun Greymaw, he'd die among the ghosts of his family.
"Then we'd better move fast," he said.
They left the temple as the first gray light of dawn touched the eastern sky.
Vahyn's horse—a sturdy mountain breed, gray as smoke—waited where he'd left it, hobbled in a small clearing. It lifted its head at his approach, nostrils flaring.
Then it caught Orlaith's scent and shied violently.
Animals always knew. They could smell the death on her, the curse that made her touch lethal.
"Easy," Vahyn murmured, catching the reins. His hand stroked the horse's neck, and the claiming bond... did something. He felt Orlaith's presence pulse, felt his own wolf respond, and suddenly the horse calmed.
As if the bond reassured it: she's ours, she's safe, she's pack.
Except she wasn't pack. Would never be pack. In three moon cycles—less, probably, given how fast the claiming was draining him—they'd both be dead.
He pushed the thought away and swung into the saddle. Then he looked down at Orlaith.
"You'll ride with me," he said. Not a question.
She stared up at him, clearly recognizing the intimacy it would require. "I could walk."
"For three days? Through demon-infested wilderness?" He extended his hand. "The bond won't let us separate. You know this."
Her jaw clenched. But she took his hand.
The claiming mark flared at the contact, even through her glove. Heat and magic and that pull that lived in his chest now. He hauled her up behind him, and she settled against his back with rigid reluctance.
Every point of contact burned.
Her thighs against his. Her hands gripping his waist. Her breath on his neck.
The claiming bond sang, delighted, demanding more.
His wolf growled agreement: Closer. Hold her. Keep her. Ours.
Vahyn gritted his teeth and urged the horse forward.
Behind him, Orlaith spoke quietly. "This is going to be a very long three days."
"Yes," he agreed.
And felt the claiming mark pulse in rhythm with his heart as they rode north, toward the ruins of everything he'd lost, with the one person in the world who might understand what it meant to be the last of a dying line.
The one person who was currently draining his life force with every breath.
Disaster, he thought again.
But his wolf just purred: Mate.
And for the first time in seven years, Vahyn didn't feel quite so alone in his dying.