CHAPTER FOURTEEN #3
She looked up from a stack of parchment, her face lighting up as I rushed toward her. She laughed, catching me in a hug. "I thought you were dead or sulking. Or both."
"Very much alive," I smiled. "What are you doing here?"
"On a very specific mission."
She eyed me suspiciously, then spotted Asher looming behind me. Her brows lifted. "What kind of mission?"
I stepped back, serious now. "I need books. On blood bonds. Oaths. Anything with original text. Nothing 'cleaned' for the curriculum."
Jules blinked. "You're sure?"
"Very."
She nodded slowly, turned on her heel, and waved us along. "Come on."
We followed her past two restricted alcoves until she stopped at a heavy stone shelf marked in an older dialect I barely recognized. Jules pulled several thick, dusty volumes free and dumped them into my arms.
"Start here. I have to run before Master Elan catches me out of my row again."
"Thanks," I said, already clutching the heavy tomes close to my chest.
She looked at Asher once more and narrowed her eyes. "Behave."
He winked. "That depends entirely on her."
With a snort, Jules vanished back down the hall. I dropped the books on a long reading table, and a puff of dust billowed into the air. Asher leaned lazily against the table edge, picking up the top tome. "So... academic bonding. How thrilling."
I raised a brow. "You can leave, you know."
He opened the book with an overly graceful flourish. "Now why would I miss the chance to watch you unravel ancient blood curses in your cheer uniform?"
It was only then that I looked down and realized—yep, I was still in the damn uniform. Shadows curled over my thighs like they had a mind of their own, licking at the hem of the red skirt.
"Behave," I warned.
Asher sprawled into the seat next to me with infuriating ease.
"Okay… so, blood oaths," I said, flipping open a thick volume with golden thread stitched into its spine. "I need to understand what this bond actually is."
He stilled, just slightly. I noticed.
The first page was lined in a language I didn't recognize, but the translation below made my stomach tighten.
"The Blood Oath. A sacred rite once performed between bonded wielders in ancient times. Rare. Dangerous. Eternal."
I read aloud, my voice soft. "It allows emotional syncing… sensations shared across distances. Eventually—if deep enough—projection of thoughts. Images."
Asher leaned in, the shadows licking along his collar as if they were listening, too. "Projection? Through the bond?"
I nodded, swallowing hard. "It also says… resisting it becomes harder. The more physical the connection, the more intense the bond becomes."
There was a long, charged silence. Then he grinned—slow and wicked. "So basically, you just need to jump me."
I slammed the book shut and smacked it against his chest. "That is not what it says!"
"Not in those exact words, no," he said, catching it effortlessly. "But the vibe is there."
I grabbed another scroll, trying to ignore the heat rising up my neck. My body still remembered last night—his hands, his mouth, and the ache he'd left behind.
“Here,” he said suddenly, his silver eyes scanning another page. “Queen Alayna.”
I leaned over, my shoulder brushing his. “She was a fire wielder,” I murmured, my eyes racing across the text. “And she bonded to a shadow wielder?”
The Archives were so quiet I could hear the frantic staccato of my own heart against my ribs.
“She enacted the blood oath to save her life,” Asher read, his voice dropping into a gravelly register that vibrated through the wood of the table.
“The two became inseparable in battle. Their magic began to sync. Their boundlings began reacting... instinctually. Mentally. They could feel each other’s emotions. Hear each other’s thoughts.”
I could barely breathe. The air in the library felt thick, charged with the same ancient current pulsing from the yellowed pages.
“They weren’t supposed to fall in love,” I whispered, my eyes fixed on an illustration of a woman wreathed in white-hot flame. “But they did.”
My gaze moved lower.
“And the stronger their connection became, the more powerful the blood bond grew.”
“It says they became the most feared and powerful pair in recorded history,” he murmured, his silver eyes tracking the text with an intensity that made the shadows at his feet sharpen.
I followed the passage with my finger. “Their connection unlocked new forms of magic. Hybrid. Volatile. Dangerous.”
There was more beneath it.
Smaller writing crowded the bottom of the page, a passage taken directly from Alayna’s own records.
A blood bond does not create what is not already there. It magnifies.
My finger stopped.
Well.
Fuck.
I kept reading. Silently this time.
Fae were already intensely instinctual creatures. We felt everything harder than humans did. Anger. Hunger. Attraction. Possessiveness. Desire. Restraint had never exactly been our species’ greatest fucking strength.
But according to Alayna, the blood bond made those instincts worse.
Much fucking worse.
Desire fed desire. Need fed need. Emotion passed through the bond only to return stronger, creating a relentless cycle between the two people connected by it. The more attraction that already existed between them, the more consuming that cycle could become.
Proximity became a need.
Touch became instinct.
Protection became primal.
Possessiveness became almost impossible to suppress.
My pulse stumbled.
That explained far too fucking much.
The way I knew when Asher entered a room without seeing him.
The awareness that crawled beneath my skin whenever he stood too close.
The hunger that hit whenever he touched me.
The irrational possessiveness that had begun clawing its way out of me despite the inconvenient fact that I was still technically betrothed to another man.
And then I reached the next paragraph.
My mouth went dry.
Apparently, if those bound eventually became lovers, the physical connection could alter the bond even further.
Pleasure could travel through it just as easily as pain or emotion.
One person’s desire would bleed into the other, their body responding before sending that reaction straight back through the bond.
Again. And again. Each response amplifying the next until instinct, magic, and physical need became almost impossible to separate.
Oh.
Oh, fuck no.
Alayna described the resulting need as all-consuming. Touch. Skin. Proximity. The instinct to protect and possess one another intensified, and separation could become increasingly difficult as the bond deepened.
One final line sat beneath the passage.
Once blood, magic, and body recognize another as their own, instinct does not easily surrender what it has claimed.
I stared at it.
Then slowly slid my hand over the words.
Nope.
Asher did not need to fucking read that.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’ve been staring at the same paragraph for a while.”
“Have not.”
“Darling.”
“Ancient blood rites,” I blurted, turning the page before he could lean closer. “Very boring. Moving on.”
One dark brow rose.
I ignored it.
He gave me a look but continued reading, mumbling something from the next page. I wasn’t listening anymore. Not really.
Because he was right there.
Close enough that every shift of his body registered against mine. Close enough to breathe him in, woodsmoke and an oncoming storm. Close enough that the awareness of him became impossible to ignore.
And now I knew why.
Or at least why it felt so fucking intense.
The blood bond wasn’t creating this.
It was magnifying something already there.
Something tightened deep in my chest.
Not a thought.
An instinct.
My magic stirred beneath my skin, restless and hungry. The blood bond pulsed between us, once, twice, each beat stronger than the last.
Then it surged.
Heat tore through me.
I didn’t think.
I just moved.
In a blur of crimson silk and heat, I was on top of him, straddling his lap. The chair creaked beneath our sudden weight, but Asher didn’t flinch. He just looked up at me, silver eyes wide, tracking every micro-movement like he’d been waiting for this exact collision.
“Darling,” he murmured, his voice low and wicked. “Rules.”
I looked down at him, my breath hitching. That one dark curl had fallen over his forehead, and his eyes were swirling pools of quicksilver. And that dimple—that infuriating, godsdamn dimple—was going to be the thing that finally sent me over the edge.
His fingers trailed up my thighs—slow, deliberate, drawing invisible circles on the skin exposed by my short skirt. I nearly gasped, the friction sending sparks through the bond. I shifted, rolling my hips against him in a slow, torturous arc.
His eyes flashed, and he hissed through his teeth, his grip on my thighs tightening until his knuckles were white. Every nerve in my body lit up. Every cell in me screamed for more.
"Gods," he said, his voice like velvet sin as I rolled again. "You're playing games, Ava."
I swallowed hard, my throat tight. I wanted to moan. I needed to let the sound out, to feel him break. But I didn't. I wouldn't. He chuckled darkly, the vibration traveling from his chest directly into mine, knowing exactly how much I was holding back.
"You're not ready for what happens when you stop fighting," he whispered, his breath hot against my jaw.
My power surged beneath my skin like wildfire, threatening to scorch the very air between us. "You're the one playing games, Maddox."
His smile said guilty. His eyes said come closer. The bond? It just roared mine.
His fingers lingered, tracing lines of fire over my skin, and I could have sworn the bond itself growled with hunger. I leaned in, my lips brushing the shell of his ear, my voice low and laced with molten heat.
"I don't think you're ready for this, Bond."
He stilled. Just for a heartbeat. His eyes blazed, and his jaw clenched so hard I thought it might snap.