Chapter 35
O ur time together after the ceremony was short-lived. The reception that followed was quaint and perfect, Aeverie and Vox having joined us, as well as several of the servants and higher-ranking officers from both armies. But it felt like only minutes before the moon was relieving the sun from its post, and my sisters came to collect me.
It is tradition for the newly vowed couple to separate before meeting again at the Hunt. Which isn’t all bad, as it allows time for me to prepare, and for Sin to ingest the tonic, the effects of which will begin to tunnel their way through his veins and force him into entering a rut.
Ileana and my sisters accompanied me to my chambers, while Sin stayed behind with my brothers, and the priestess who will begin crafting the potion for him. That was a few hours ago, and with each passing moment, the nerves in my gut cinch tighter.
“Goddess Wren, loosen up. If you don’t start relaxing now, however will your husband fit that—how did you so endearingly phrase it again, ah yes—his giant shifter cock in you?” Zorina snickers, her laughter making her hand shake, and she smears some of the red wax she’s brushing onto my fingernails.
“Hilarious,” I sneer. “I still cannot believe neither of you mentioned it before. What good is having sisters if not to prepare you for such an…”
“Endowment?” Zorina suggests with another snort of laughter.
“ Endeavor ,” I correct, shooting her a stern look that is all tease.
“Your washroom has been stocked with salve,” Cosmina offers. “As well as extra linens.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Why extra linens?”
She exchanges a quick look with Ileana before answering. “For the blood, Wren.”
Oh. Oh .
“I see,” I quickly say, hoping it isn’t obvious that her response caught me off guard. Of course there would be blood. Sin is already very blessed in that department, in both length and thickness, but in his partially shifted form…
“What in the heavens will it even look like?” I blurt out, unable to stop myself.
Zorina dips the edge of the brush into the red wax again, her smile now stretched far too wide for her face. “They’re all different,” she says. “Most have knots, some have spines, some have ridges, some are bent, and some aren’t spectacular at all. You’ll just have to find out how much, or how little, Sin’s been holding out on you with. Take notes while you’re there, I want to know all the dirty details.” She shoots me a wink that dislodges another sigh from my lips.
“Perhaps do not disclose said notes to me,” Ileana chimes in, now fiddling with the pillow she holds to her chest where she lays at the foot of my bed. We’re all piled on the bed—Zorina perched cross-legged while she paints my nails and Cosmina glancing up from her book every minute or so where she rests against the footboard. “I still have to work very closely with him, and if I end up turning red the next time he tries to talk war with me, he’s going to know it’s because you shared said dirty details with me”—she laughs—“and I shall never be able to make eye contact with him again.”
The three of them erupt into laughter, and my own follows. “With the way you have Eldridge tripping over your heels, I dare say you just might find yourself in the same?—”
Knock, knock, knock . The light tapping has all four of our heads spinning to stare at the set of double doors. Zorina jumps up, stowing away the little bottle of wax on the table, and cracks open the doors just enough for her to poke her head out. She shuts them a few moments later, then turning back to us, says, “It seems someone is already lovesick and can’t follow directions to stay away for a night. Wren, your beloved feline is requesting a word with you.” She speaks the words with exaggerated loudness, clearly for Sin’s benefit on the other side of the doors.
I kick my feet over the side of the bed and hurry to the doors, pulling my robe closed over my nightgown. When I open the doors, I find him leaning against the far wall, his hair still partially pulled into a top knot and his braids still firmly plaited. I pull the doors closed behind me and go to him at once, framing both sides of his face.
“What is wrong?” I ask, noting the gleam of something troubled in his downward eyes.
He pushes off the wall and hovers above me, but his attention is fixed on the floor, his eyebrows knitting together, and a soft crease forms between them. “Singard,” I whisper, then ask again, “What has saddened you?”
His head snaps up at that. “You have given me the only thing I have ever yearned for. I am not saddened. Far from it. I know I’m not supposed to be here, but I couldn’t not come. The priestess gave me the tonic, and I was pacing my study but could not bring myself to drink it. Not before I came to see you.”
I lower my hands to twist my fingers into the black shirt he wears, the fabric pulled tight across his chest, and he reaches for the waist of his black trousers. Sin pulls a dagger from his sheath and reverses the grip in his hand, presenting me with the hilt. “Take it,” he says, hissing in… in pain .
“Is that iron?” I ask, surprise heightening my tone.
“We both know I struggle to rein in my instincts when my beast begins to stir, and that is without me being forced into a rut. I do not know how strongly the tonic will affect me, and… and I don’t want to hurt you, love.” Sin flicks his tongue across the front of his teeth. “I will be gentle with you. But just in case, if I truly lose my agency, take the dagger. And listen to me, Wren. If you so much as tell me to stop once, and I don’t, you plunge it straight into my chest. Do you understand me?”
“You won’t hurt me,” I whisper, shaking my head.
“The dagger, Wren,” he barks, forceful now.
I take it from him then, if nothing else than to relieve him from the sear of the iron blade pressed into his palm. “Promise me you will bring it with you tonight.”
“I promise.”
He seems to relax some at that, and he nods, mostly to himself.
“Is there something else? You still seem tense.”
A humorless laugh, and his tongue darts out to taste his bottom lip. “Would you mock me viciously if I confessed I was nervous?”
No. Actually, quite the opposite.
“I’m nervous, too,” I whisper. “But not because I don’t trust you.”
“The pain?” he asks, eyes darkening. Then in a voice so low, he vows, “I will be so gentle with you, love. I will make myself be gentle.”
I shake my head. “Not that either. I just want to be… enough for you. You are extraordinary, Singard. As both man and beast, and I worry I will not be enough for you tonight. I am just a human and?—”
He grabs my waist and reverses us so his hips press me against the wall. Leaning forward to rest his forehead on mine, he scoffs, “ Just a human . Wren, you are so much more than that, and you don’t even see it. I just gave you an entire kingdom, and it doesn’t even come close to how much you deserve.
“You”—he dips his head to skim his lips across the corner of my mouth, and I resist the urge to hike a leg around his hip and pull him into me—“are my salvation. I deserve to rot in the darkest pits of Hell when I die, and I don’t know if you will pull me into the light, or if I will suffocate you in my darkness, but wherever we end up, I will cherish you until the very stars burn out. And when we are lost to all-consuming black, I will love you. My heart. My soul.” He nips at my bottom lip, then drags his tongue across to boon his hurt. “My wife ,” he adds darkly.
I kiss him then, slow and deep, the dagger still clutched in my hand. He welcomes me into his mouth, and I take my time exploring him, my tongue teasing the undersides of his canines. Desire courses through me as I imagine how they will feel later tonight, lengthened and sunken into my flesh, tasting me, claiming me, Marking me.
He tortures his bottom lip when I pull away and flashes me a smile that turns my bones to melted sugar. “Just one more thing before I leave you.” I don’t have time to ask him what he needs before he’s pushing open my robe, shoving the hem of my nightgown up my thighs, and drags a claw across my underwear, splitting the fabric. Sin rips them from my body and balls them into a wad in his hand, bringing them to his nose and inhaling deeply.
His eyes turn to liquid black, and when he tilts his head back, his lips parting slightly, I glimpse the edges of those canines now protruding farther from his gums. I watch in awe, whatever embarrassment I felt a moment ago now quickly resolved as I watch the want—no, the need —morph his features into something pure animal.
“My scent is already affecting you.”
Sin rights his head with a frustrated growl, and the sound goes straight to my cunt. “Your scent has tortured me since that very first day in the dungeon, but now… Now it will be the sole cause of my undoing if I don’t fuck this Bond into you tonight.”
He delivers a sharp smack to my pussy, and I wince, from both the surprise and the sting. “You have two hours. Don’t be late, little witch, unless you want me to drag you outside and knot you on the front lawn of our dominion.”