Chapter 9
Rykan’s beast roared for more. He could feel it clawing at the edges of his control—the primal urge to mark Ember as his in the most ancient and irreversible way his kind knew.
Her taste flooded his senses, sweet and intoxicating, and her body fit against his like she’d been made for him.
Every soft sound she made, every tug of her fingers in his hair, every arch of her spine sent fire through his blood.
She was beneath him. Willing. Wanting.
He could take her. Right here in the melting snow, with the winter sun breaking through the clouds and the forest holding its breath around them.
He could strip away the barriers between them and bury himself in her warmth, could sink his teeth into the soft curve of her neck and bind them together forever.
The claiming bite pulsed behind his fangs like a living thing.
Ours. Take her. CLAIM HER.
His hips pressed forward, instinct overriding thought, and she gasped against his mouth as his erection lodged between her thighs.
The thin layers of clothing between them were nothing—he could feel her heat and catch the scent of her arousal mixing with the cold mountain air.
He could hear her heart racing in perfect counterpoint to his own.
One more moment and he would lose himself completely. He wrenched himself away.
The separation was violent and graceless. He rolled off her and onto his back in the snow, chest heaving, every muscle locked in a battle against his own nature. The cold bit into his overheated skin and he welcomed it, used it to anchor himself to reality.
Control. Find my control.
He couldn’t look at her. If he looked at her—flushed and breathless, her lips swollen from his kisses, her hair tangled in the snow—he would be lost. He would crawl back to her on his hands and knees and finish what they’d started, consequences be damned.
So he stared at the grey winter sky and forced his breathing to steady. In. Out. In. Out. The rhythm of discipline, the mantra of restraint, the familiar prison of self-denial.
“Rykan?”
Her voice was soft and confused. He heard her shift in the snow beside him and felt her warmth even with the distance between them.
“Don’t.” The word came out harsh, rough-edged. “Don’t touch me right now.”
Silence stretched between them. He could feel her watching him, could imagine the expression on her face—the hurt, the uncertainty, the questions she wasn’t asking. His beast snarled at him for causing that confusion, for pulling away when she’d given herself so freely.
“You need to understand something.” He pushed himself up to a sitting position, keeping his back to her. The snow had soaked through his clothing but he barely noticed. “What just happened—it cannot happen again.”
“Why not?”
Such a simple question. Such a devastating one.
“Because I nearly—” He stopped, jaw clenching. How did he explain this? How did he tell her that he’d been a heartbeat away from bonding them together for life? That his kind didn’t take lovers casually, that what she’d offered was more than she could possibly understand?
“You nearly what?”
He heard the snow crunch beneath her boots as she rose. She wasn’t approaching him, but she wasn’t retreating either.
“We are trapped here together.” He forced the words out, each one a stone in his mouth. “Isolation creates a false sense of intimacy. You should not mistake proximity for anything more than what it is.”
“Is that what you think I’m doing?”
Her voice had changed. The confusion was still there, but beneath it lay something harder. Something that reminded him of the steel she’d shown during training, the determination that refused to yield no matter how many times she fell.
“It’s what happens.” He rose to his feet, still not facing her. “I have seen it before. Two people, trapped together, convincing themselves they feel something that evaporates the moment the circumstances change. It is biology, nothing more. The need for connection when there are no other options.”
They were the words he needed to say—the rational, logical explanation that would protect them both from a mistake they couldn’t undo—but they felt like lies, even as he spoke them.
“Look at me.”
He didn’t move.
“Rykan. Look at me.”
Something in her tone, a command disguised as a request, made him turn.
She stood in the trampled snow, her cheeks still flushed, her hair still wild, her clothing rumpled from their entanglement. But her expression was calm. Far calmer than it had any right to be.
“You think I kissed you because you’re the only option?” She tilted her head, studying him the way she sometimes studied a training form—analyzing, assessing, searching for the weakness she could exploit. “That’s an interesting theory.”
“It is not a theory. It is—”
“I grew up surrounded by people.” She cut him off, her voice still steady. “Servants, tutors, guards. Men who would have done anything to gain my father’s favor, including pursuing his daughter. I learned very young to recognize the difference between genuine interest and opportunistic proximity.”
He opened his mouth to respond, but she wasn’t finished.
“I’ve also spent my entire life being told what I feel.
That I’m too fragile to trust my own emotions.
Too sheltered to understand the real world.
Too delicate to make my own choices.” Something flickered in her eyes—anger, old and worn smooth by years of swallowing it down. “I thought you were different.”
The accusation made him wince.
“I am trying to protect you,” he growled. “You do not understand what you are inviting.”
“Then explain it to me.”
She took a step towards him. Just one, but it closed the distance between them enough that he could feel her warmth and detect the lingering traces of him on her skin. His beast purred at the scent of his marks on her, even as his rational mind screamed warnings.
“I know you want me,” she said quietly. “I felt it. Whatever you’re trying to convince yourself of right now, your body told a different story.”
“Want is not the issue.”
“Then what is?”
He should walk away. He should turn his back, return to the cabin, and put walls between them until this madness passed.
She couldn’t physically stop him, but then her hand closed around his forearm.
The touch was light, gentle, nothing like the grip that would be required to hold him.
She wasn’t trying to restrain him. She was simply…
connecting. Offering contact that he could refuse or accept as he chose. He didn’t leave.
“Tell me,” she said.
He looked down at her hand on his arm. Her fingers were delicate against the corded muscle, pale against his silver-grey skin. She looked fragile next to him, breakable, like someone to be protected instead of wanted.
But she’d never acted fragile. Not once.
Not when he’d found her in that crumpled escape pod, not when she’d woken in a stranger’s cabin, not when she’d demanded he teach her to fight.
This small female had a spine of steel beneath that soft exterior, and she was using every ounce of it to hold him here.
“My kind does not take lovers casually.” The admission felt like pulling teeth. “When we… When a Vultor male finds his mate, the bond is sealed through a claiming bite. Once given, it cannot be undone. The connection is permanent. Lifelong.”
Understanding dawned in her eyes. “And you almost…”
“Yes.”
The word hung in the air between them. He watched her absorb it, watched the implications arrange themselves in her mind.
He expected fear. He expected her to finally show the horror she should have displayed from the beginning—the realization that she’d been kissing a creature that had nearly bound her to him forever without her knowledge or consent.
Instead, she said: “Almost. But you didn’t.”
“I stopped myself this time. I might not next time.”
“So you have control.”
“Not enough.” He laughed bitterly. “Not with you. You have no idea what you do to me. What you have done since the moment I pulled you from that pod.”
Her fingers tightened on his arm. Not demanding, but anchoring.
“What if I want this?”
The question shattered something in his chest. He could feel the cracks spreading, could feel all the walls he’d so carefully constructed beginning to crumble.
“You do not know what you are asking for.”
“Then show me.”
He should refuse. He should turn away, put distance between them, protect her from his own nature. She was trapped and dependent on him for survival. Any honorable male would recognize the imbalance of power and refuse to take advantage. But he no longer claimed to be an honorable male.
This time, he kissed her, his mouth descending over hers, slow and controlled. A deliberate counterpoint to the desperate hunger of their first kiss, a demonstration that he could restrain himself when he chose to.
She melted into him immediately, her body swaying towards him, her lips parting beneath his. He tasted her slowly, thoroughly, mapping the curves of her mouth. When she tried to deepen the kiss, to pull him closer, he resisted. He set the pace himself, refusing to be rushed.
I can give you this much, he thought. This measured thing. This leashed desire.
But even though he maintained control, he felt it slipping.
Each soft sound she made eroded his discipline.
Each brush of her tongue against his pushed him closer to the edge.
His free hand found her waist, pulling her against him, and the feel of her body pressed to his was almost enough to break him once more.
He pulled back before he could lose himself again.
Her eyes were glazed, her breath coming in short gasps. She looked up at him with both wonder and frustration.
“That’s…” She swallowed. “That’s not exactly convincing me to stay away from you.”
A rough laugh escaped him. “That was not the intent.”
“Then what was the intent?”
He brushed a strand of hair from her face, tucking it behind her ear. The gesture was tender, almost reverent, and he saw her shiver at the contact.
“I need you to understand that I can choose. That I am not an animal at the mercy of instinct, no matter how much my beast demands otherwise.” He let his thumb trace the curve of her cheekbone.
“But I also need you to understand the danger. If we continue down this path, there may come a moment when I cannot stop. When the claiming becomes inevitable. You deserve to make that choice with full knowledge of the consequences.”
She was quiet for a long moment, her gaze searching his.
“And if I still choose you?”
The words hit him like an actual blow to the chest. His beast howled in triumph, straining against its chains, demanding that he take her offer and run with it.
“That’s not an option. Not yet.” He stepped back, putting distance between them while he still could. “But perhaps we could… explore. As long as you allow me to remain in control. No more… incidents like today.”
“You call that an incident?”
“I call that dangerous.” He turned back towards the cabin, knowing she would follow. Knowing he couldn’t trust himself to look at her again without kissing her senseless. “For now, we train. We talk. We try to build something that can survive beyond the circumstances that brought you here.”
“And your beast?”
He paused, not turning back. “My beast will wait. It has no choice.”
He heard her footsteps in the snow behind him, matching his pace as they walked back to the cabin. Neither of them spoke, but the silence was different now—charged with promise rather than tension.
Despite his determined words, he didn’t know if he was strong enough for the control he’d just promised.
His body still ached with denied need, his beast still prowled restlessly beneath his skin, and the memory of her taste was seared into his mind like a brand.
But he wanted to be worthy of the chance she was offering him.
Even if he didn’t yet believe he deserved it.