Chapter 29 A Bond Completed #3
The magic in me didn't question. It erupted.
Light and heat blazed under my skin, blinding.
My mouth went dry, and instinct took over.
Then came the thirst—not a gradual wave, but a tsunami, a drowning force that obliterated reason.
The scent of his blood—hot, sweet, coppery—filled my head, and a desperate cry tore from my throat.
He yanked me against him, sheathing himself in one brutal thrust. His fingers pulled at my hair, a painful grip anchoring me to him.
“Drink,” he growled, dragging my mouth to the bleeding gash on his chest. The word was a command. His voice was no longer human, but a low, dark thing threaded with the same ravenous hunger that had made him bleed for me.
I pressed my lips to his chest and drank.
His blood filled my mouth, and with every swallow, the fire under my skin burned brighter.
I was barely aware of him moving, his thrusts growing from hesitant to demanding.
My focus was singular: the exquisite relief of the thirst as it began to wane.
It wasn't a decision to pull away, but reluctant release as the craving finally quieted.
I leaned back, unsteady, the taste of him still on my lips.
When I met his eyes, I saw it: a self-satisfied smirk.
The look of victory.
A cold dread coiled in my stomach as understanding seeped into my veins—slow, poisonous.
This was what he'd been trying to do. Not to hurt me.
Not to take anything from me. But to fix something.
He couldn't give back what he'd taken, so he meant to even the stakes—give me the same terrible advantage he had.
He hadn't asked. Hadn't explained. He'd simply acted, driven by the same fear he'd been trying to bury.
And I felt it then, bitter and disorienting: the violation of it.
The choice taken from me. Again. The echo settling deep in my chest.
And yet—
The magic inside me sang.
It surged with a joy I couldn't deny, answering some ancient call, as if I'd stepped onto a path laid long before I knew it existed. Another hidden threshold crossed. Another step taken in a journey whose end I couldn't yet see.
The beast in Baird hadn't slipped its leash; it had snapped it.
Not in fury, but in instinct—a brutal certainty that this was the only way to mend what our fragile human selves had broken.
And my magic didn't just answer; it surrendered.
His power crashed into mine, not threading but seizing, amplifying, binding us together in a way that felt terrifyingly, irrevocably right.
It became something new, a force larger and more permanent than either of us alone.
Braced against him, dizzy and reeling, I couldn't tell which was more horrifying: that he'd done it…
or that he believed this was the only path back to me.
He leaned in and kissed me, a messy clash of his blood and my saliva.
Both hands clamped onto my hips, yanking me flush against him.
My legs spread, ass grinding into the cold countertop as the pressure built to an unbearable peak.
His breath was ragged against my cheek, his words a desperate murmur.
“Let me—feel ye—come on my cock, Mira.” His words came out broken, barely intelligible—a tangle of command and plea that made one thing unmistakably clear: he wasn't finished with me yet.
He knew exactly how to move his hips, that rhythm coaxing me toward a pleasure so intense it was pain.
He was pushing me to the edge, to the only place where I could shatter and be remade.
I cried out as the orgasm hit, a blinding wave of release.
Golden light exploded from my core, leaching through my skin, the pleasure of both the physical and magical release almost too much to bear.
Seconds later, his rhythm began to falter.
I knew the sign. I moaned his name, and the sound sent him over.
He cried out, his body shuddering against mine.
But as his movements slowed, his lips found my skin, his voice a low, muffled whisper.
“I'm sorry. I never should have taken this from ye, Mira.” The apology wasn't for tonight.
It was for the first time. For the choice that made tonight necessary.
The thin trail of blood down his chest had nearly stopped.
I traced it with my finger, slow and reverent, then brought it to my lips, tasting the last drop—warm, metallic, faintly salted.
“How does this work?” I asked, still breathless.
My gaze flicked to the abandoned knife on the floor. “Did you need that?”
“Aye.” His voice had steadied, though something fragile still threaded through it. “It had to be from my heart vein—or my jugular. And I preferred to keep it where I could see it.”
Understanding clicked into place. Sorcha's odd question the day after I'd first succumbed to the blood thirst—whether I'd drunk from his jugular or heart vein—suddenly made sense. She'd scoffed when I'd said the wrist. Now I knew why.
He hesitated, then went on, softer now. “I thought about it, ye know.
That night the thirst took you. But I realized too late I'd missed the moment.” His eyes searched mine, uncertain.
“I vowed then, if you ever asked again—and I realize this wasnae exactly ye asking—I'd fix this. I wanted to give ye the chance to have what I have.”
I hated that I was here again—standing in the wake of something Baird had decided on his own, convinced it was better withheld until it couldn't be. And yet, if completing the bond was the price of keeping us together—of holding onto what we'd built—I knew I'd pay it.
I blinked hard, trying to shake off the frustration and focus on what came next for us.
I still wasn't on the same page as Baird—not about this idea that being chosen by the goddess was dangerous.
So far, it had meant crafting a reincarnation piece and occasionally burning bright enough to resemble a one-woman fireworks display. Hardly apocalyptic.
“When will I feel it?” I asked, my voice uncertain, searching myself for any hint that something fundamental had already shifted—and finding nothing.
“I dinnae ken—not precisely,” he said quietly. “When I drank from ye the first time, I told myself I didn't feel anything until the next morning. Until the moment I told ye I loved ye…and felt that small, impossible glimmer of your love for me inside ye.”
His mouth curved faintly, the expression more wonder than certainty.
“But if I'm honest, I think I felt ye sooner than that—that night, when I stayed outside.” He exhaled slowly.
“Frustration, mostly. Ye were frustrated. I was too. It was hard to tell where your feelings ended and mine began.” His gaze held mine, steady but vulnerable. “But once it started—it grew quick.”
“Don't leave me,” I said, reaching for his hand—not because I was afraid of what came next, but because the words felt necessary.
We washed the blood from our skin in silence, then curled together on the bed.
Baird drew me into his arms, settling me against him, my head tucked into the hollow of his neck.
He pressed soft, absent kisses to my hair, my temple, my forehead—small, grounding gestures meant to anchor us both.
We waited.
Somewhere between his steady breathing and the solid reassurance of his body, I drifted off.
I woke in the night to darkness pressing down on me—thick, total, and inescapable.
Fear flooded my senses, sharp enough to make me nauseous.
The strangeness of it struck me—I was completely enveloped, but this emotional signature was foreign.
This was not my fear. It was Baird's. I couldn't believe he'd been carrying this— alone.