Chapter 37
I run.
The forest is a blur of dark green as my feet pound the earth, putting as much distance between Sin and me as quickly as my human legs will allow. I’m allotted a three-minute head start, but that means nothing to me anymore. How many minutes have already passed—one? Two? Is he already chasing me?
The adrenaline is like ale in my blood, and I hardly notice how tightly my lungs constrict, unable to focus on anything that isn’t the compulsion to keep moving. The night is dark, silver moonlight filtering in through the interlocking branches above my only source of light, making it near impossible to see more than a few feet ahead of me. Which is so fucking convenient with how unforgiving the terrain is, jagged sticks scraping my bare calves, and the loose rocks rolling beneath my soles causing me to lose my footing several times.
Bracing against a tree, I rip off my sandals, then continue darting through the forest. The ground is vicious to the delicate skin of my feet, but better to have swollen, blistered soles tomorrow than to break my ankle trying to outrun my feral lover in shoes ill fit for it. Unfortunately, there is nothing to be done about the chaffing of my thighs. Stupid shifter traditions. I’m told to wear my hair down to mask my scent, but also must wear a nightdress so there is minimal resistance between my potential Mate and the hole his magicked cocktail has made him compelled to rut. Perhaps transcendents should stick to running around naked and drinking themselves unconscious at rowdy parties, because their sense of what is fair is as wild as they are.
Three minutes have definitely passed now. I think. Maybe not. If they had, surely he’d have caught up to me by now. The Malachite is somewhere between one and two miles from where the Hunt started. It’s not an unreasonable distance for me to cross before he finds me, but I don’t slow my pace, unwilling to give Slaine any reason to deny Sin his right to Mark.
Crunch .
I careen to a stop, my momentum throwing me forward, and my hands breaking my fall. I slowly right myself, then go deadly still, searching for the source of that sound. I couldn’t tell which direction it came from, but it was loud enough for me to hear it over my own labored breathing and the snapping of branches beneath my feet. Surely deliberate, as if he wants me to know he’s already caught me.
Silence.
Long and pregnant, the kind of silence that clings to predators. It could have been an animal, one that doesn’t shift into a gorgeous male drunk on a tonic that makes him savage with the need to breed me, but instinct breathes on my neck, and I’m sure he is here. Somewhere.
Watching.
“I know you’re there.” I don’t bother raising my voice; he will hear my whisper just as clearly. I speak only to shadows, and none of them speak back.
The weight against my thigh is suddenly comforting, and my hand hovers near Sin’s dagger instinctively, the need to protect myself against an unknown threat warring with my knowledge that this is all a game. Perhaps it’s the darkness severely reducing my sight, or the magic coursing through my veins with the call to defend myself, but my teeth bare in warning.
A dark chuckle responds, and I whip to my right, sure that it came from that direction. Nothing but bark and leaves, tall grasses and the rhythmic chirping of nighttime insects. But I heard him. I’m certain.
I start running, this time veering to the left, opposite where I heard his low voice. My blood pounds in my ears, and I look over my shoulder. Once, twice, a third time, as the faint snapping of branches crescendos alongside me, always keeping pace, but never outrunning.
He’s toying with me. A cat playing with its prey, but perhaps the Black Art has forgotten—the wren he hunts has the heart of a falcon and the bite of a shrike.
I whip forward again, my attention fixed on what must be a game trail just ahead. The woods thicken on either side of it, which should make it more difficult for someone of his size to?—
Movement.
It’s dark, too fucking dark , but I’m certain the edges of those trees just expanded, a form moving behind them. I skid to a stop, my breath coming in heavy, rapid pants, as I scan the trees’ silhouettes, trying to track the movement. But it’s gone. No snapping of branches, not a single rustle of a leaf. Just cold, dead silence.
Dread slithers down the curvature of my spine and settles in my gut.
It’s just a game. Just a game. Just a… just a game.
I know this, but it does little to tame my own creature that responds to the adrenaline quickening the blood in my veins, not the knowledge that this is my husband’s twisted version of consummation.
I spin around and head back the way I just came. Now running away from the Malachite. I need to double back somehow, get farther down then cut through the woods to my left and circle back to?—
I nearly crash right into him.
A yelp startles out of me as I drive my heels into the ground, sharp plant fragments digging into my soles, but it’s not the stinging in my feet that tears the sound from the recesses of my chest.
Sin slowly, slowly , cants his head to the side, his eyes trained on mine, then my mouth, my chest, the curves of my hips, my thighs… His lips part, and his tongue glides across his bottom lip, tasting my scent from there.
Gods, he is beautiful. There is no denying that in the daylight, Sin looks every bit the handsome king. His posture stiff and straight, the years of nobility and high-class education as embedded in him as his bones and blood, but in the absence of light, Sin is every bit his creature, every bit the hunter .
And he has come to reap me.
Perhaps I am as untamed as him, because goddess , my pussy cries at the sight of him like this. It was the dark mage that captured my heart, but it’s the beast with fur as black as midnight that spiraled me into madness.
Sin takes a measured step towards me, then another, his head slowly angling one way, then the other. I match his steps, retreating as he approaches, the tension rolling off him thickening the air between us.
“Took you long enough to find me. I was beginning to think you stopped for a catnap.”
A smirk positively disturbing crosses his face at that, and when he takes one more step forward, I don’t retreat. He tsks softly, each click of his tongue a throb in my cunt. “A sweet thing you are,” he murmurs in a voice like nightfall, “playing with the black cat. Careful, little bird, or you just might get eaten.”
“Oh, I am thoroughly counting on it.”
He laughs lowly, the sound a dark, wicked thing, and goddess drag my ass through Hell for how I gush in response, my thighs dampening with liquid desire.
His nostrils flare, his smirk immediately twisting into a snarl as his eyes drop to where this ridiculous excuse for a dress brushes the tops of my thighs, such little cloth separating him from his objective. My slick baiting him in like the starved beast he is.
With a growl promising pleasure, pain, or both, Sin lunges for me. I dart to the side, quick as a hare, and he spins to track me. He doesn’t lose me for a second, his every nerve fine-tuned to my own. “Don’t fly away from me now, little bird,” he coos.
I smirk, trailing a painted fingernail down the column of my neck and over the hollows of my collarbones. Teasing every pressure point, knowing my scent thrumming from them is driving those shifter instincts wild. Which is exactly what I need. There is no outrunning Sin. There is no fighting him off. But if Slaine wants a fair fight, then I need to throw a little fire at my lover.
His chest swells as his head tilts towards the heavens, breathing me in. I watch in awe, at how his very stance balances on the edge separating the man I married from the beast that will claim me. When Sin lowers his head, his slitted pupils lock mine, and a deep sound throttles in his chest.
“You have no idea, little witch, how badly I need to knot you. Bounce you on my cock and stuff that dripping cunt of yours.”
I smile sweetly, knowing I have him exactly where I need him. “So, are you going to do something about it, or are you just going to continue standing there and mewling at me like a kitten?”
My taunt snaps the final fraying threads of the tether restraining his beast, and he moves for me again.
He is lightning fast. If I was playing fair, I’d have never been able to dodge him quickly enough. But the moment he springs for me, my collective meets his.
Sin goes stumbling backwards, a swear on his breath as his hands find purchase in the dirt, breaking his fall. He’s already recovering, but it’s all the time I need.
I run. I run like fucking hell, and I don’t dare look back.
The forest is a smear of green and black as I sprint away, with no idea which direction I run. Had I spun back towards the river? Or did I get turned sideways and now run west? Or east? Fuck.
I don’t have time to orient myself, not that I’d be able to anyway with my sight blinded by the all-consuming dark. Fire burns in my calves, and debris stabs my feet, but I can’t help the stupid grin that curves my lips, despite the pain. Even without the tonic heightening his senses, Sin has always been a hunter. Never has he been content to merely take what he desires; the Black Art favors the chase.
There is no denying the inevitable. Sin will catch me. And when he does, he will take me until I am a writhing mess on his cock, just like he promised. He will knot me, and as sure as I am that he will lovingly fuss over every nick on my body afterwards, he will take immense pleasure in the moment, in knowing how my every step tomorrow will be lanced with pain, a reminder of who had claimed me the night before.
My lead is much shorter this time; Sin will be on me in seconds. I scan for movement, strain to listen for footsteps behind me, but it’s only the pounding of earth beneath my own feet that I hear.
I command my legs to keep moving, narrowly avoiding slamming into the thick trunks as I dart between them like a mouse in a corn maze. Except unlike a mouse, I am all too aware of the raptor circling me, silent and alert, waiting for its opportune moment.
I slam right into him.
One second it was only the fat shadows of tall trees, and the next… I didn’t even see him step out in front of me.
Sin’s arm bands around me, his lips at my ear immediately. “Say you’re sorry,” he rasps, and goddess, I almost do. Sink to my knees, take his cock out, and suck him an apology he’ll never forget. I angle my head so my lips graze his neck, and my tongue darts out to trace a line up the column of his throat to his jaw.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper against his skin. “Especially for this.”
I thrust my collective towards him again, twisting out of his grip in the same movement. His arm releases me, a ravenous sound rumbling deep in his chest, and I know I’ve pissed him off this time. He can’t ward off my attacks, not when the transmutation magic is pumping through his veins this thickly. It’s not playing fair, but I never agreed to.
Even so, he manages enough of a barrier to keep himself from being knocked too off-balance, and I don’t manage two steps before his hand vices around my forearm, yanking me to a halt. He spins me around but keeps me at arm’s length.
“My Mate fights dirty,” he growls.
“I may be your wife, but I am not your Mate.” I swallow, a desire so deep it borders on pain undulating in my cunt, knowing exactly the effect my words will have on him.
“When I am done with you, you will be so much more than both. You will be a helpless little thing in my bed, begging me to spread salve on your pretty pink flesh, swollen from how I stretched your tight, wet hole around my knot. If you want to break the rules so badly, little bird, then let’s fucking break them.”
The hand not holding me moves to his chest, and he punches his claws into the muscle there, slowly dragging them down. Five red rivers pour out from beneath his nails, dripping down his chest to pool into the defined valleys of his stomach.
And goddess fucking above.
It awakens something ancient in me.
It must be the tonic in his system, because his blood is sweeter than it’s ever been, misting the night with a scent as devastating as it is saccharine. My tongue turns molten. “You smell delicious.” My words are nothing more than a whisper, and a wolfish smirk settles on his mouth.
“If my beast is agitated, it’s only fair yours is too. But even now, I promise you, little witch, that lapse of control you’re fighting is only a sliver of what I’ve been feeling. For weeks, I’ve felt it slowly slipping. Every time you throw your braid over your shoulder, exposing that gorgeous fucking neck… each time you cross your legs, every time you look at me, and every time you so much as glance at another male”—his hold on my arm tightens—“it slips further. You are mine. And after tonight, my Mark will serve as a license to kill anyone that ever dares try to touch you, not that I ever needed one.”
It is frightening how badly I want him.
And as his grip on me clenches even tighter, and he begins to pull me towards him, war rages inside me. I want to fall into his chest, to whimper while he touches me, with violence or tenderness, it wouldn’t matter, because I would be his, and he would be mine. But it would be too easy still.
As Aeverie once said, a blood mage is the hardest Mate to conquer.
So let him fucking conquer .
I unleash my creature, and she races for Sin like an arrow fletched with blood-soaked feathers. I find the hum of his blood immediately, sinking phantom nails into the shreds he tore across his chest. Time slows, Sin’s blood warming my talons and pulsing between my mental fingers, thick and hot and… Goddess, I need to taste him. But first, I must ruin him.
So that he may ruin me.
I yank on the rope now tethering me to him, and time snaps back to present. It all would have happened so fast for him, but for the bloodwitch, that single second endured for several moments, and with my hold on his collective white-knuckled tight, I command his blood to obey me.
Sin’s blood rises from his slits, staining the air rouge. A beautiful sight, my lover’s essence splayed out before me like my own personal feast, but this is not the time to lap his juice. I clench my fingers into my palm, then shoot them forward, thrusting Sin’s blood right back at him.
It hits him with force, his own syrup splattering his warm, brown flesh with deep crimson. It threads his hair with ribbons of red, the blood on his neck dripping over his broad shoulders, and more of it speckles his arms and hands. My cunt cries at the sight of it, a perverse part of me having always preferred the dark mage with blood on his hands.
My assault shoves him backwards, and I lick my lips when his eyes snap back to mine in warning, one forged from the hottest iron. If I wasn’t compelled to abide by the rules of a wayward god, I’d leap for him and lick every ounce of his hurt from his skin. But it is not fleeting pleasures I yearn to experience with the Black Art—I want him for a lifetime.
So I run.
The Malachite is but a distant thought. The only direction I’m acutely aware of is behind me where Sin’s blood sauces the air, floral and sweet but underlined with something different, something new . Woodsy, like patchouli petals on my tongue.
Goddess, why did I do that? I could have just shoved him away, shoved the godsdamned iron dagger into his chest if I had to, but now the bloodwitch gallops through my veins like wild horses. And it’s taking everything I have to not turn around and become the hunter .
But some rules do have to be followed tonight.
He’s closing in on me, that floral scent growing more potent by the second, and curse my overzealous cunt for how she clenches in anticipation, so eager to be ruined. Arousal trickles onto my thighs, surely sweetening the air and leaving a trail of spun sugar in my wake, leading him straight to?—
Straight to me.
Elysande, fetch my ass for the wicked idea that corrupts my last morals, one too brilliant to ignore. I dart to my left, stopping at a tree several paces in. Swiping a hand beneath my dress, I skim two fingers through my folds and brush them against the bark. A few trees deeper, and I repeat the action, then quickly turn back the way I came to continue on my original course. I run for thirty seconds, then dip to my right, once again spooning slick onto my fingers and pressing them to the trunk before doubling back.
It won’t work indefinitely. As soon as Sin discovers that my scent is leading him to dead ends, he’ll know exactly what I’m doing, and fuck , I should be held in captivity for how much it excites me knowing how furious it will make my hunter to learn that his little bird has tricked him.
I scent him before I see him.
Sense the violent magic stampeding through his veins, my own collective agitating without me needing to order it, and I spin to my left, my arms already outstretched, and destruction sparking from my fingertips.
My power hits him with the force of a tidal wave, a mere second before his hard body would have slammed into mine, launching my hunter back into the shadows he emerged from. It’s not that I wanted to hurt him, but my collective alone isn’t enough to slow him, not when the tonic has summoned his beast. My magic hurls him well out-of-sight, but I hear as his mass collides with the hard earth, as thick branches snap beneath his weight, and fresh blood flavors the night.
My jaws snap together, and I force myself to turn around, to breathe through the bars of my teeth. If Sin is worthy of claiming me as his Mate, I will have a lifetime to partake of his forbidden wine, but it is not a distraction I can afford now.
Where is this fucking river?
A torch will serve as a beacon at the river’s edge. I scan the forest, desperate for a glimmer of light between the trees, but only shadows stare back. I’ve been turned around so many times, robbing me of all sense of direction or gauge of distance, but judging from the persistent ache in my limbs, I have to be close. Unless I’ve been running in circles…
Sin will need to heal before continuing his pursuit, but it won’t take him more than a minute at most. I close my eyes, steadying my breath and forcing my heartbeat to slow, as I swell my collective and expand it outward. Farther and farther, searching for the source of the beacon’s heat, for the wild call of a fire’s furious spirit.
My hands tremble, and a gasp slips through my lips as my collective warms with the wisps of a tumultuous energy that can only belong to the flame. I envelop it, stretching my essence around it until it’s a glowing fever in my palms.
That’s when I surge, deluging it with a molten power all my own.
My eyes fly open to a billowing incandescence.
It towers above the trees, just long enough to make its location known, to allow me to reorient myself in this dark maze before it reduces once more, leaving a pillar of smoke in its wake. It’s not far, maybe a few hundred feet at most. A sob tears from my chest, both in relief and in panic to have made it this close to the river. This close to the natural boundary that isolates a life bound to Sin, and a life endured with a constant ache in both our chests, the fragments of this broken Bond forever reaching for its other half.
I don’t want to cross that river.
The river that will soothe the hurt in my feet, boon the cuts on my legs, and swallow me in its icy embrace. The river that will suck every ounce of the dark mage’s poison from my veins and fill them instead with the promise of a fate not tethered to the man that corrupts my heart to the darkest black. The man I just hurtled into the woods with a wave of destruction. A fitting attempt to starve this Bond, because the Black Art’s love, even in its purest form, has always been destructive .
A violent yowl severs the night.
The howl so primal, so raw, so… so Singard .
My heart leaps into my throat at the sound of his beast, and as much as my every instinct yearns to remain here for his devouring, I command my feet to move. No, to run . Faster than I ever have, towards the river that waits to receive me, to grant me salvation from this nefarious love, this… this dark compulsion .
I run until I hear the burbling of the river on the rocks, a foreboding lullaby, a warning. If I breach the water’s surface, then perhaps our love story was always supposed to be just that—a story. One with a tumultuous beginning, a serrated middle, and a devastating end, one that concludes tonight. But if our love is truly meant to endure until the stars burn out, Sin will catch me. He has to. He must .
I keep running.
I run, because with every stinging breath that pierces my lungs, I know Sin will not fail me. I run because I know his strength, and I run because I know his love. I run towards the last trees separating me from the clearing, and I run towards the expecting river that comes into my sight.
I run because I trust him.
Fire blazes atop a towering stave before me, its flames flickering hungrily on the water’s surface. My heartbeat pounds in my ears like thunderous rain, my breath barbed, and my skin slick with sweat, and still I run, through the final copse of trees, the antidote to the Black Art’s damning devotion glimmering in the river’s current.
I run, and I run, and I fucking run . Because I need this Bond to be fated, need my husband’s loyalty forever weaved with mine in an unbreakable vow. More than the blood that pulses in my wrists, or the saw-toothed breath in my lungs, I need… him .
Sin’s roar shatters the night as a blur of black leaps in my periphery. I dart to the side, narrowly missing him, and my heart sinks, lodging painfully in my gut. Because his dark form glides right past me, and for a fleeting moment, I think he has missed. That our wicked worship for each other has finally been forced to sever.
But my lover has always been a hunter.
A wren his greatest craving.
With a howl as ravening as this savage love, Sin’s claws punch into brittle bark, his yellow-green eyes locking mine as his feline form twists and pushes off the tree in front of me. It’s as if time reduces to this single moment, enduring in a cadence far slower than my hammering heart as Sin pounces for me, his gilded gaze searing my chest as if it were the dawn itself, and his muscular limbs outstretched as he dives in devotion for the songbird who never allowed herself to be caught.
My husband hits me with vengeance.
Sin stains my vision black as his weight collides with my own, and I go falling backwards, down, down, down, but I never hit the ground. My face is buried in his furred chest, stealing my breath, as all four of his limbs wrap around my body and he rolls me, sheltering me from the brunt of his hit. We can’t tumble for more than a few seconds, but it might as well be an eternity, one where I’m the moon and his raven fur a star-flecked sky. One I’d be content to wallow in until the very realm caved in on us, and even then, I’d find a way to continue illuminating, to burn out my Blackheart’s shadows until the end of time.
A gasp falls from my lips as the weight on my chest suddenly lifts, his beast’s muscled legs anchoring either side of my waist until he leans down, a harsh growl rattling from the depths of his chest. Sin’s form blurs mid-lean, his midnight fur bleeding into a long mane of black hair, and his muzzle reshaping into the gentle slope of brown lips. And when his hips come down on top of mine, they are of warm flesh, as is the muscular arm stretched out beneath him, his hand riddled with protruding purple veins splayed across my collarbones to pin me beneath him.
“If it’s my beast you wanted, Mate , all you had to do was ask.”
“Singard,” I whisper, our breath tangling between us.
Metal brushes my neck. Not just metal— iron .
Sin holds the dagger to the bob of my throat, the one now missing from the sheath on my thigh. “Not another sound, love. Don’t make me cut into you on our wedding night.”
I swallow and nod, my jugular flirting with the edge of his blade. He parts my legs with his knee, and goddess , his cock is heavy against my thigh. Sin skims his lips across mine before moving them to my ear. “Touch me,” he demands lowly. He doesn’t say it outright, but I hear the meaning buried beneath his graveled words. Giving me the opportunity to feel him, to familiarize myself with this part of him while the night robs me of my sight.
He doesn’t have to tell me twice.
Snaking an arm between us, I grasp the crown of his cock where it rests against my navel. I run my thumb across his slit, finding it already slippery with seed, and the dark mage lets out a masculine groan that reverberates through my entire body. The head feels much the same, albeit wider , and I grow bolder, sliding my hand farther down his length and?—
Sin spits an impressive curse.
Small pricks bite into my fingertips, and I freeze, unsure if I hurt him or not. I lock his eyes in the dark, and Sin lets out a shuddering breath, his mouth slightly parted as he watches me stroke his spines . I pause again, and he grinds his hips into my hand, causing those small barbs to rake across my palm. His eyes close, another low groan slipping through his lips.
“They’re sensitive,” I whisper.
“Immensely,” he bites out.
“Did you know?”
A quick shake of his head, the movement almost rabid. “I’ve never been with anyone like this before. Not until… you,” he says, and something in the way he utters that word sends my heart somersaulting in my chest. Sin was conditioned to hate this part of himself for so long, taught to be ashamed of his purest form. ‘Would you mock me viciously if I confessed I was nervous?’ It hadn’t occurred to me when he asked, but a deep thoughtfulness spreads through me as I consider how vulnerable he must feel to bare himself like this to me.
“Does it hurt?”
His eyes open, and I know his answer before he gives it. “It feels fucking amazing,” he manages, voice strained.
I glide my hand down farther, slowly to avoid impaling myself on any of the spines, and my fingers begin to spread apart, Sin’s cock growing thicker the closer I get to the base. When I reach the end of his shaft, I slide my hand underneath to grasp his balls, but?—
Sin moans, the sound deep and masculine, and it sends a pang of need straight to my pussy. It’s not the base of his shaft I reached; it’s his knot . He drops the knife, not trusting himself to hold it steady while I touch him like this.
My other hand joins my first, and I clasp both of them around the bulge, my fingertips barely touching. This is supposed to fit inside of me?!
As if sensing my sudden panic, his hand suddenly cradles my jaw, and he presses his forehead to mine. “I will be gentle with you,” he forces out, his tone pained like it’s taking everything he has to push through the haze and wrangle his beast.
I watch him as I slide my hands up and down his knot, kneading it, and?—
“It’s getting larger,” I say, unable to edit the surprise, or perhaps that’s hysteria, from my voice.
Sin pulls back to stare down at me when he answers, his arms anchored on either side of my head to support his weight. “It will continue to swell until I release.”
It’s then I notice just how wet my stomach is. He’s already spilling on me .
I give a slight squeeze, massaging the swollen flesh, and more cum spills from his slit, coating my belly in his need. Desire quickly overcomes my nerves at the sight of it, and I raise one hand to spit on my fingers, then smear my saliva on him.
Sin groans as I stroke him, careful of the spines that grip my hand every time I move back towards the crown, and I moan at how slippery his seed has made him.
“You are beautiful,” I say. “In every form, you are magnificent, but there is something about you in this shape that feels… right. Like I am seeing you .”
Sin says nothing, but his eyes remain locked with mine, his hips gently bucking into my hands in slow, rhythmic thrusts. Another squeeze, and more cum gushes from his slit. A trembling exhale, then he’s murmuring, “ Now , love. I need you now.”
Hooking a leg around his hips, I use my weight to nudge him, and he rolls over, pulling me along with him until his back is against a tree, and I’m straddling his lap. I eye the blood on his face, his chest, more speckling his biceps and hands, and I don’t hold myself back. I dive for him, swirling my tongue up one hard plane of his chest, over his nipple and up the column of his throat. I moan at the taste of his blood in my mouth, how it wells between my teeth and velvets my gums.
I adjust to position him at my entrance, and Sin grips my hips, his claws puncturing the skin there, and neither of us pretend to care that his hold borders on painful. I lick his lips, and he opens for me. I push into his mouth, letting him taste himself on my tongue, and I grind against his dick, moaning as I glide along his length.
Fuck, his scent .
“Sin, your blood,” I whisper, my head falling back as I continue rocking against him. “It smells so good. You taste… so good .”
His claws dig in deeper, and pleasure lances through me with the pain. “It’s the Bond,” he snarls, the sound not laced in anger, but pain. Needing me so badly, and I continue to deny him, delaying the inevitable for as long as possible. Not because I’m nervous, but because of how badly I want him too. I never want this to end.
“I feel it too. Slowly snapping into place,” he says through heavy, labored breaths.
The Bond. We knew our joining would forever alter Sin. That his every instinct would be rewired to protect me, that he would feel me always. In human-transcendent relations, the human is usually very minimally affected after the Bond, making the arrangement frowned upon in shifter culture. A human could still walk away from their Bonded if they one day desired to, but the transcendent… they wouldn’t be able to even contemplate the idea.
I’m not a shifter, but the blood of a different beast tunnels through my veins. Awe starbursts across my chest as realization settles there. Sin’s instincts will forever be wired to protect his Mate, just as Sin’s blood will now be my greatest craving. The one substance I need more than water, more than the very air I breathe.
The blood of my Mate.
Sin delivers a quick smack to my backside, the movement stemming from imminence, not violence. “Lift your hips for me.”
I do as I’m told, and Sin grasps his hard cock and notches it at my entrance. I sit immediately, slowly sliding down onto him, and fuck , my flesh stings as I stretch around him. His spines rake my insides, the sensation not painful, but more a series of quick pricks as I slide over them. As long as I continue sliding down and don’t try to pull off, they should remain fairly painless.
Sin chases me with his mouth, and when his lips find mine, they move with tenderness. The aggression from earlier still there, but more easily controlled now that he’s inside me. I sink, and I sink, and I sink, my walls stretching to take him. I’m so wet that it doesn’t really hurt, not until…
“Oh, fuck,” I cry out.
“Don’t slide backwards,” he warns through clenched teeth, gripping my hips to hold me still. “They will shred you if you do. Slowly, love.”
Pleasure and pain war inside me, my muscles straining against the bulge at the base of his cock. I rock on Sin’s knot, slowly and controlled, his spines gently grabbing my walls and eliciting sharp stings, the kind that makes my head fall back and a moan tear from my chest. But the knot?—
“I can’t. It’s too big, Sin,” I whimper.
He grabs my breast, dipping his head to flick his tongue against my nipple, and heat floods my core as he spills inside me again. He drives his hips upwards, and I moan deeply as his swollen flesh connects with my clit, the pressure there immobilizing.
Sin swallows the sound, his kiss greedy, and when we part, I drag the tip of my tongue up his neck, lapping up the remnants of his blood. “Listen to me,” he whispers, grabbing my jaw and steering my face to his. “I would never do anything to hurt you. Do you trust me?”
“Always.”
“Then I need you to trust that you were made for me. I love you—I love you so fucking much. Now open up for me, heart.”
Sin grabs my hips again, and with both sets of claws wrapped around my waist, he pushes me down. I cry out as he forces himself through muscle, as his knot stretches me wider than I’ve ever been spread before. Stretching, stretching, stretching …
“ Fuck, Wren ,” he growls. “You’re choking me.”
Judging from the way he starts spilling in me again, I don’t think he minds it. “Come now—let me in, love. That’s it, just like that. You’re doing so fucking well.”
Pain cleaves through me, and I grip his arms, my nails curling into his biceps as his knot starts to slip inside. I cry out, Singard’s name a god and a devil on my tongue as the most painful pleasure spreads through me, coursing through my belly and shooting down my limbs like stars bursting across the twilight sky.
“Little witch,” he groans, the bob of his throat straining. “Right there. Fuck, yes.” Sin captures my mouth again, entwining his tongue with mine to feed me his pride. His hands palm my ass, and he begins to bounce me slowly. And goddess above, I love the burn. Love the way he stretches me to capacity, how the Black Art watches me writhe on his cock with that ferocious hunger in his eyes, how he… how he loves me so completely.
Weight slams down on my breast, my chest searing with molten heat like someone carved a cavern in my heart and stuffed it full with iron. And suddenly it’s not the blood in my veins that sustains me, nor the beats of my heart, or the air in my lungs.
The Bond snaps into place.
I wasn’t sure if I would feel it, if my human heart would feel the blessing of the shifter god, but every thump against my ribs beats in devotion to Sin. My husband. My Mate .
Sin cradles my jaw with both hands and pulls my face to his, his fingers featherlight on my cheeks. “You do not know the gift you just gave me,” he purrs.
My eyes drop to the blood still staining his arms, and my mouth dries at the sight of it, at that scent . I bare my teeth, the clenching making me tighten around him, and Sin grunts darkly. “The smell,” I bite out. “The Bond… you smell so good, Singard.”
I lean forward, my eyes trained on the pulse thrumming in his neck. My teeth hover over the pressure point of his throat, and I pause, silently asking for consent.
“Every part of me is yours. Take it, love. Let me feed you.”
I sink my teeth into his flesh, and his juice bursts across my tongue. Thick and sticky and hot, it runs into my mouth and coats my teeth in silk. Sin’s head falls back, and he grips my ass again, rocking me on his knot. I moan into his neck, his blood gushing into my mouth as my pussy milks more and more spill from his cock.
“Drink as much as you want from me, just never from another,” Sin growls, grunting as he fucks into me. Again, and again, and again, and goddess, it’s too much. His knot swells impossibly further, the pressure against my clit too much, and?—
“Singard!” I howl his name as I release my bite and climax around him, a release so intense it borders on pain washing through my limbs and cresting into my fingers and toes.
“Fuck, you’re squeezing me so hard. Come here to me, wife. Now ,” he growls in warning, and I know he’s about to come.
About to Mark me.
I lean forward and angle my head to the side, exposing the right side of my throat to him. He grabs my hair and moves it aside, his mouth kissing the valley of my collarbone. “ Mine , little witch,” is all he manages before he dives for me.
A rhapsodic sigh falls from my lips as Sin’s teeth lock onto the juncture between my neck and shoulder. His fingers twist into the back of my hair, holding me steady as I arch into him, my chin tilting towards the heavens.
His magic is swathed in ice, my skin pebbling as it skates through my chest and blooms frost flowers in my belly, his power tasting me, claiming me, Marking me.
I grind against him, the taste of Sin’s viscous blood fresh in my mouth heightening my senses, every bounce on his cock spearing me with pain and insurmountable pleasure. Sin’s bite isn’t tender. His venom seeps into me, and he moans around my neck as he tastes the blood of his chosen.
I whimper as I writhe on his cock, Sin’s magic and my own stirring together in a dangerous blend of chaos that heightens every sweet note of his blood, every prick of his spines against my walls, and the warmth of his seed as he spills, and spills, and spills.
I whisper his name. And again, unable to stop, the shape of it permanently traced in my tongue. I come again, and this time, it isn’t for the warlord, or the dark mage, or even my husband.
I come for my Mate. The love of every life I will endure, and the one I will cling to when we are encompassed in nothing but black.
His jaws release me, and the throaty, primal growl that tears from his chest turns my veins molten.
Sin comes with vengeance.
I howl as his knot swells one final time, the sound laced only in pleasure. His knot stoppers his cum, only trickles of cream leaking down his shaft, scenting the night with our love, our Bond.
Slowly, his swollen flesh begins to relax, relieving some of the pressure. Sin moves a hand to take my jaw once more, and he dips his forehead to mine, our eyes locked together. “I feel you,” he says in a serrated whisper. “All of you.”
“I feel you too.” And I do. It’s surely not the same as it is for him, but I do feel him, in that cavern beneath my breast, and in the burn in my throat as the gouges on his chest call to my beast like a siren in a storm.
His own personal brand, and I smile at the irony, at how our twisted love story began with a small black heart on my hip and ended with a Mark permanently whittled into the base of my neck.
My most shameless sin.
And now, with the Bond firmly snapped into place between us, the purpose for every arrhythmic beat of my own black heart.