Chapter 25 Rhys
RHYS
When she finally pulled away, we were both shaking.
My chest heaved like I’d run miles instead of lying still while she fed from me.
The wounds she’d left—the slashing cuts from her earlier attempt to sever our bond—were still there but looked different now.
Silver-edged, like they’d been cauterized by moonlight.
They gleamed against my skin like some kind of supernatural tattoo, and when I touched them, they didn’t hurt.
They hummed.
She straddled me, her face still hovering over my chest but high enough that our eyes met. Her fangs had retracted, but I could still feel her. She’d left part of herself behind in my bloodstream, woven into my pulse.
“That was…” I started, then stopped because every word that came to mind sounded inadequate.
Like trying to describe lightning to someone who’d never seen a storm.
How did you put into words the sensation of your life force being drawn out through willing veins?
The way her feeding had felt less like being drained and more like being completed—two halves of something finally clicking into place?
My wolf hummed with satisfaction, sprawled contentedly in my chest. Meanwhile, my human brain scrambled to categorize what had happened, to file it away under something manageable like medical necessity or supernatural dependency.
It hadn’t felt medical. And it sure as hell hadn’t felt like dependency.
It had felt right.
“I know what you mean,” she said quietly, and I was grateful she didn’t make me finish the thought.
We stared at each other across the few inches that separated us on the couch, both of us trying to process what had just happened. What it meant. What we’d become to each other while her mouth was on my chest and her fangs in my skin.
The silence stretched until I couldn’t stand it anymore.
I touched the transformed wounds on my chest, tracing the silver edges with my fingertips. They didn’t hurt anymore—if anything, they felt expectant. Like they were waiting for her to return to them.
I was waiting for her to return to them.
Her gaze followed the movement, and when she looked back up at me, her eyes had darkened with a hunger that had nothing to do with blood and everything to do with the connection we’d just forged.
“These aren’t going away, are they?” I asked, still tracing the silver lines.
“I don’t think so.” Her voice had gone soft, almost reverent. “They’re like markers. Signs of the bond.”
“Permanent ones.”
“Yes.”
The weight of that settled between us. Whatever we’d just done, there was no taking it back. No pretending it hadn’t happened or that it meant nothing. The silver wounds on my chest were proof that we’d crossed a line.
She lay down on me, and heat radiated from her skin now, hotter than she’d ever been. Her hand hovered over one of the wounds, not quite touching it, but I could feel the energy between her palm and my chest.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
“Different.” I caught her hand, pressed it flat against the silver-edged cut near my heart. The contact sent electricity shooting through my nervous system. “Stronger. Like something that was broken got fixed.”
Her breath hitched as she traced her fingers along the other cuts on my chest. The silver edges seemed to pulse under her touch, responding to her in ways that probably violated several laws of physics.
“Rhys,” she whispered. She didn’t pull away. Quite the opposite. She dragged her fingers down.
“Where do you think you’re going?” I asked. I dreaded any answer except the one I wanted.
Fortunately, her only answer was a hungry smile.
She undid the button of my jeans, pulled down the zipper, and my already hard cock bulged under my boxers. She adjusted the fabric so my dick was free. It twitched when she took it in her hands, pre-cum shining at the top.
I inhaled sharply. “If you start…”
She raised an eyebrow, eyes full of desire, and bit her lip.
She slid down to the floor, on her knees, and I sat up on the sofa, watching her beautiful eyes the whole time.
She leaned forward and ran her tongue from the bottom to the top of my shaft.
My head fell backward, and a moan escaped my lips.
She licked again and took the head into her mouth.
She gently ran her teeth along the tip, which made me twitch, and I took her hair in my hand.
“No fangs, I promise,” she said. “For now.”
She lowered her mouth onto me, her hand grasping below—she couldn’t take it all in her mouth. I felt the back of her throat, and my wolf threatened to explode right there and then. I held him back.
“Sable,” I whispered. “It’s too much. I can’t—”
I had to grab the cushions to hold myself back.
She sped up, running her lips up and down, gagging a little over the head of my cock as she slammed it into the back of her throat.
The friction was unbearably good, promising relief like I’d never felt in my life, knowing it was her, the woman I’d chased and at one point thought I’d kill.
And I was coming to realize she was probably the one for me.
Forever.
“Fuck…”
I came into her mouth, around it, dripped over her as my release completed.
The world spun and I had to feel her body against me.
She swallowed, and I tugged gently on the back of her head to bring her to my level.
She came willingly, a hand on my abs as she pulled herself up to me.
I kissed her on the lips, the wetness of my cum still on her.
She climbed onto the sofa and we laid back down together, her head on my shoulder and legs coming up and across me. Pinning me in place.
Perfection.
I caressed her hair while she stroked my abs, and for a few minutes, all thoughts of the Southern Council, vampires, fangs, and curses disappeared from my mind.
Suddenly, the alarm went off, reverberating through the safe house.
She scrambled off my lap, smoothing her hair and trying to look like she hadn’t just followed up feeding on me by sucking my cock. I grabbed my T-shirt, threw it on, and saw that the silver wounds were visible through the fabric now.
“What the fuck is that noise?” she asked.
“Warning of intruders on our Orion lands. This location is used for the safe house specifically because it’s off-grid, completely self-sufficient. The alarm’s the only thing hardwired in case we ever needed to know something was going on.”
I rubbed my forehead, pushing back my wolf’s need to break out and find Logan, to back him up, whatever the hell was happening out there.
If he really needed me, he wouldn’t have set off the alarm—I’d have felt him reaching out to me.
For now, we had to sit back and wait, knowing that some kind of shit was going down.
I had to believe in my brother.
Three hours.
I’d felt amazing for three hours, which was how long we’d been waiting for news from Logan. It turned out that was exactly how long it took for my body to start falling apart again.
I paced the safe house like something feral, muscles twitching under skin that felt borrowed from someone else. Every cell in my body had reorganized itself around her blood and was screaming for more.
Meanwhile, Sable looked like she could wrestle gods and win.
She sat curled in the armchair by the window, an ancient leather-bound book from a random shelf in her lap, acting like she hadn’t fundamentally rewired my nervous system through blood and connection.
Her skin held an inner glow that made my wolf whine with want, and when she moved, it was with a fluid power that made apex predators look clumsy.
The feeding hadn’t just helped her. It had transformed her into something magnificent and terrifying.
And left me jonesing like a junkie who’d found religion in a needle.
“You’re going to wear through the floorboards,” she said, without looking up from her book.
“Can’t help it.” My voice came out rougher than gravel. “Something’s eating me from the inside out.”
“Define eating.”
I stopped in front of her chair, and she finally lifted those eyes. She scanned my face with the kind of clinical detachment that made me want to bare my throat just to get a reaction.
“Feels like my bones are trying to crawl out through my skin,” I said.
She closed the book with a soft thud. “Withdrawal.”
“From what?”
The look she gave me could have melted steel. “You know from what.”
Fuck.
“One feeding doesn’t create addiction,” I said, but I didn’t believe it.
“Doesn’t it?” She unfolded herself from the chair with predatory grace, and every instinct I had screamed at me to either run or submit. “Your wolf seems to disagree.”
As if she’d called him, my wolf surged forward, desperate to close the distance between us. To press his neck against her and to have her taste him.
The craving hit me so hard I actually staggered.
“This is insane,” I managed.
“This is biochemistry.” She drifted past me toward the kitchen, and I caught her scent, honey and rain with that tinge of silver now, and my mouth watered. She disappeared inside. “Your body adapted faster than either of us expected.”
“How long until it stops?”
Silence from the kitchen. Then the sound of running water, and she appeared in the doorway with a glass that might as well have been filled with false hope.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never bonded with anyone through feeding before.”
Bonded. The word hit hard.
She handed me the water, and when our fingers brushed, electricity shot straight to my core. My body recognized what it needed and was demanding I get it.
I drained the glass in three gulps, but it was like trying to satisfy hunger with air.
“How often…” I started, because I needed to know what I was dealing with. “How often will I need…”
“I don’t know.” She leaned against the doorframe, studying me with those too-knowing eyes. “Judging by your current state, more often than either of us probably wants to admit.”
“Define more often.”
“Every few hours, maybe? At first?” She shrugged, but there was a crease between her brows that betrayed her concern beneath the casual gesture. “It might level out, eventually. Or it might get worse.”
“Worse how?”
“More frequent. More intense. More…” She gestured vaguely at my current state of barely controlled need. “This.”
Outstanding. I’d traded the hollow ache of a fated mate bond for full-blown supernatural dependency. Those three hours after feeding had been the best I’d felt since this whole mess started.
Logan’s truck rumbled up the dirt road.
I moved to the window, and sure enough, there was my brother’s beat-up four-by-four kicking up dust clouds like it was fleeing the apocalypse.
Sable materialized beside me, silent as smoke. “He brought backup.”
Kenza was in the passenger seat, and in the back was Killian. Our best enforcer.
“Shit is getting real,” I said.
“How do you know?”
“Because that’s Killian’s I’ve-been-hunting-things-that-could-eat-me face. I know it well.” I turned to look at her, noting how her power made the air around her vibrate. “Question is, what do they want badly enough to send our best enforcer running scared?”
Three sharp knocks rattled the door exactly thirty seconds later.
“Come in,” I called, stepping away from the window and trying to look like I wasn’t suffering from supernatural withdrawal.
Logan entered, his alpha energy filling every corner of the small space. His eyes found me first—checking for damage, probably scenting the changes in me—then looked at Sable with an expression I couldn’t read.
I could smell his concern. His confusion. His growing suspicion that something fundamental had shifted in the few hours since he’d left us alone.
“We’ve got a situation,” he said.
And judging by the way Sable had gone perfectly still beside me, it was about to get a whole lot worse.