28 Tommy #3
“Let go,” I commanded, my voice entirely wolf, my teeth grazing the sensitive skin right over her pulse. “I have you. Let go, Kaia—”
When she shattered the second time, her whole body clamped down around me, her inner walls milking my heavy length in relentless, pulsing waves that tore my own release up by the roots.
I roared, a sound that was entirely predator, my massive body locking rigid as I emptied myself deep into her in hot, pulsing surges.
But the physical release wasn’t enough. The ancient, possessive thing that lived at the root of the Midnight line surfaced. I dropped my mouth to the crook of her neck, finding the delicate overlap of muscle and vein just above the ash-mark. Her pulse hammered against my lips, frantic and alive.
“Mine,” I growled, the word vibrating against her skin with a finality that went deeper than language.
My fangs dropped, sharp and lethal, and I bit down.
My teeth broke the skin, and the sharp, metallic tang of her blood ignited the bond in a blinding flash of white-hot light.
It sealed us. Not just physically, but at the absolute center of our souls.
I could feel her. I could feel the shape of her exhaustion, the depth of her courage, the frantic, desperate relief flooding her wolf as the anchor finally locked into place.
And even as the pain spiked, her own fangs sank into the muscle where my neck met my shoulder, hard and instinctual, claiming me right back with a ferocity that had nothing to do with the woman and everything to do with the animal.
I collapsed forward, taking my weight on my forearms to shield her, burying my face deep in the curve of her neck as I rode out the shuddering aftershocks of the orgasm. For a long time, the only sound in the warded room was the harsh, ragged tear of our breathing.
Slowly, the haze cleared. I pressed a gentle kiss to the rapidly healing puncture wounds at her shoulder.
The claiming mark. I stared at it in the firelight—the raised, perfect crescent of my teeth on her pale skin.
A fierce, proprietary ache bloomed in my chest. The wolf inside me practically vibrated with possessive pride, a deep, rumbling satisfaction that curled around my ribs.
She wore my mark. She was safe. She was protected.
I traced the edge of the bite with my thumb, my hand trembling slightly. The contrast of the mark against the exquisite softness of her skin brought a sudden, stinging heat to the back of my eyes.
“Thank you,” I whispered against her pulse, my voice breaking.
She shifted beneath me, her eyes opening, hazy and golden and totally confused. “For what?”
I didn’t have the words to explain it. I couldn’t explain how a man who had spent his whole life deflecting the world had finally found the one thing he couldn’t laugh away.
I just pulled her tighter against my chest, wrapping my body entirely around hers, the bond humming a steady, permanent song in the dark.
*\*\*\*/*/*/*
She slept against my chest. I stayed awake on my back staring at the ceiling and feeling the crown settle.
That was the strange thing. My bloodline didn’t feel like a weight anymore. Somewhere in the last day the crown had stopped being a thing I was scared of and turned into a thing I was for. Husband. Protector. Midnight Wolf.
The funny one who’d finally figured out that some things needed to be heavy, and that you could carry the heavy thing and still make somebody laugh while you did it.
I planned to narrate fatherhood like a nature documentary.
Kaia was going to murder me. I couldn’t wait.
A flicker of movement caught the corner of my eye, out past the warded window, down at the dark edge of the staging post where the firelight gave out and the tree line started.
Finn.
I knew him by the shape even at a distance, even in the dark.
He had a heavy pack slung over one shoulder.
He was wearing a coat over what I knew were half-healed lacerations laced across his chest from the Alchemist’s rig, and he was walking away from the staging post, away from the medical tents full of rescued dormants he’d been ordered to search, away from the pack, straight toward the dark and the trees and the vast untouched nine-state machine of the Order that we’d only just scratched.
Going to find his ghost. The woman in the walls. The scent he’d caught off Kaia’s skin and recognized in his blood, the one who’d sent word back through my mate—I’ll come find him when it’s safe to want things.
Finn had clearly decided he wasn’t going to wait for safe.
And then a second shape detached itself from the shadow of the building. Santos. He was standing there with the unhurried certainty of a man who didn’t intend to lose a piece on the board this late in the game.
But Finn didn’t walk past him.
I couldn’t hear them through the warded glass, but I didn’t need to. I saw Finn gesture sharply toward the dense tree line, and then back to Santos. The realization hit me.
Sloane was a dormant. And Santos had a map that tracked dormants.
I watched Finn step into Santos’ space, closing the distance. He was asking for Santos to use the map. He was asking Santos to point him straight into the fire.
Kaia stirred against my chest. “Mm. What is it?”
I pressed a kiss to her hair and watched two of the six bloodlines stand toe to toe in the moonlight at the edge of a war that was only just beginning, while one of them decided to light a match.
“Nothing yet,” I said softly. “But I think the next part’s about to start.”