24. Varkhul
TWENTY-FOUR
VARKHUL
The claiming is nothing like the gentle rituals the old stories describe.
There’s no moonlit clearing. No soft words exchanged. No tender kiss to seal the vow. There’s only blood and desperation and the howling darkness pressing in from all sides.
I press my palm to her chest—over her heart, where the mark will burn deepest—and I push.
Not just blood. Not just pressure. I push my essence into her, the orc magic that’s been building in my veins since my ancestors first broke the Veil.
It’s dark and old and hungry, and I feel it pour through my hand into her flesh with a force that makes us both scream.
She screams. I scream. The Veil screams.
The mark sears into her skin—I can feel it forming, can feel the runes burning their way through flesh and bone and soul.
My family’s claiming pattern, centuries old, branding itself onto her heart.
It’s agony. It’s ecstasy. It’s everything I’ve spent my entire life running from, and I’ve never wanted anything more.
Light explodes from where our bodies meet.
Not the sickly opalescence of the Veil—this is brighter, fiercer, a blazing gold that turns the twilight sky white as noon.
The Veilspawn shriek and scatter, their shadow-forms dissolving in the radiance.
The breach-born throws its arms up, trying to shield itself, but the light burns through it like fire through paper.
The creature dies screaming.
The stone circle goes still. Where Veilspawn had been circling seconds before, only wisps of dissolving shadow remain — the light from the claiming has scoured the field clean.
But I barely register any of it. The magic hasn’t stopped—it’s still pouring between us, still building, demanding more than just the brand. The claim wants completion. The ritual requires consummation.
And I want her.
I’ve never wanted anything the way I want her in this moment. Not food when I was starving. Not rest when I was broken. Not absolution for the sins that weigh on my soul. She’s everything—the answer to questions I didn’t know I was asking, the completion of a pattern I didn’t know was incomplete.
Her hands are tearing at my armor, frenzied, clumsy, blood-slicked fingers fighting with straps and buckles. I help her—ripping leather and steel away, letting the pieces fall where they may. The night air hits my scarred skin, cold and sharp, but I don’t feel it. All I feel is her.
Her mouth finds mine, and the kiss is nothing gentle. It’s teeth and tongues and the taste of blood, primal and desperate and utterly consuming. She bites my lip hard enough to draw fresh crimson, and I growl into her mouth—a sound that’s more animal than man.
The boundary shudders around us. The Veil is thin here—thinning with every touch, every kiss, every surge of desire that pulses between our marks. We’re weakening it. We’re feeding the very thing we’re trying to destroy.
I don’t care.
I lift her—one arm around her waist, the other tangled in her silver-streaked hair—and press her back against the central stone.
The ancient monolith is cold and rough, carved with runes that pulse in time with our heartbeats.
She wraps her legs around my waist, pulling me closer, her nails raking down my back hard enough to draw blood.
The blood feeds the Veil. I feel the boundary strengthen even as our desire threatens to tear it apart.
Balance. That’s what our blood creates. Not healing and not poison—balance.
I take her against the stones.
There’s nothing tender about it. Nothing soft.
We’re both too desperate, too hungry, too caught up in the magic surging between us to manage anything resembling gentleness.
One hand fisted in her hair, the other gripping her hip hard enough to bruise, I bury myself in her with a single thrust that tears a cry from both our throats.
She’s tight and wet and burning hot, her body clenching around me like it’s trying to keep me there forever.
I don’t give her time to adjust—don’t give either of us time to think.
I move. Hard. Deep. Driving into her with a rhythm that matches the pulse of the mark, the beat of the Veil, the wild thunder of our combined hearts.
Her nails rake my shoulders, my back, leaving furrows of fire that only make me want more.
She’s not passive—not my boundary witch, not my fated mate.
She meets every thrust, takes every ounce of force I give her, and demands more.
Her teeth find my throat, biting hard enough to mark, and the pleasure-pain sends a shudder through my entire body.
“Harder.” Her voice is ragged, desperate, barely recognizable. “Varkhul—”
I obey. I don’t know how to do anything else.
The stone at her back cracks. I feel it give way beneath the force of our coupling, ancient runes shattering as we remake the boundary with blood and sweat and primal need. The Veil is screaming—I can hear it, feel it, taste it on my tongue—but I can’t tell if it’s dying or being reborn.
Maybe both. Maybe that’s what we are—death and rebirth, ending and beginning, destruction and creation all wound up in the same impossible act.
Eirene’s head falls back, her throat exposed, and I press my mouth to her pulse point.
I can feel her heartbeat against my lips, fast and wild, matching the rhythm of our bodies.
I can feel her pleasure building—not just through the sounds she’s making, but in my own flesh, echoing through the claiming mark like we share the same nerve endings.
When she comes, I feel it. Every shudder, every spasm, every wave of release crashing through her body—I feel it all as if it were my own.
It breaks me.
My own climax tears through me with a force that makes my vision go white, that drives a roar from my chest, that empties everything I am into the woman wrapped around me.
The mark blazes—both of them, hers on her chest and mine answering from within—and for one perfect, terrible moment, I can’t tell where I end and she begins.
We are one.
We are the boundary.
We are everything and nothing and the line between worlds made flesh.