Chapter 28
Morcant released me. Despite decades since our last meeting, the sheer burden of his connection to me had been weighing heavily in ways I couldn’t comprehend until it was gone.
I remained a vampire. There was nothing anyone could do to change that, but now I was free.
Strangely, Morcant seemed sad to let me go.
I was familiar with him enough to rule out any personal emotional motive on his part.
No, it was pure pity for himself because I’d never lead his brood of vampire underlings.
He wouldn’t become a leader amongst the ancients for harvesting my blood.
Fuck no. I had Harkin. A pack. I had a mate.
Harkin found me even though Morcant’s vacation home, or whatever the hells that was, was literally in a void.
My body had thrummed as soon as his delicious scent leaked through the door cracks.
He had come for me. The pack had all come for me.
Erebus, a primordial god, came to ensure Morcant would never find me again.
And Harkin’s alpha voice out-performing Morcant’s influence?
In any other situation, I’d have mounted him on the damn tiles.
I’d also grown to appreciate his werewolf form.
The more control he gained over it, the more powerful and commanding it became.
It was as beautiful as it was ferocious, and I loved you could still see Harkin in its eyes despite the change in texture.
Harkin whisked me through the portal, where an older female shifter with silvery white hair and a male wolf shifter stood waiting in the woods. The woman’s eyes lit up when she spotted me, her gaze dropping to me and Harkin’s interlaced fingers.
“Are you the Sham—” I had started to ask, but Harkin’s grip tightened on my hand.
Harkin didn’t stop walking, didn’t even acknowledge the two of them, just continued to stalk farther into the woods. “You’ll meet her later, Rory. This can’t wait.”
A carnal growl enveloped his words, making my core ache.
Electricity sparked between our joined hands, surging to the base of my spine. My fangs tingled, the flesh where my neck met my shoulder flushing with a searing heat.
We had been prowling through the forest for several minutes, the chatter of the dozens of left-behind shifters having faded moments ago. The crescent moon cast a subtle glow on the surrounding trees and grass, bathing them in incandescent white.
“Harkin,” I whispered, my fangs already out, and I bit one into my lower lip.
Harkin didn’t respond right away, far too focused on finding the perfect spot. His gaze darted around a clearing with an open space in the tree’s canopy where the moon was fully visible. He turned suddenly, pressing his hand to my stomach and backing me until my ass thumped into a wide tree.
The wolf slammed a hand to the trunk above my head, his claws sinking into the bark. “Rory,” he whispered back, husky and wanting. “I’ve wanted this for so damn long.”
Harkin wore only his shredded pants, his hard cock peeking through one slit. With my vampiric nails, I tore them the rest of the way off. When his topaz eyes darkened, I curled a hand around his beard and pulled his lips to mine. “Then what are you waiting for, wolf?”
Harkin’s hands moved to my hips, turning me to face the tree in one brisk motion.
The torturous sound of his claws slowly slicing through the back of my top rang in my ears.
He peeled the garment away, one palm threading between my exposed breasts.
He used his free hand to bunch his claws in the top of my pants, shredding and tearing them away from my legs.
A stream of smoke flowed past my lips from the chilly night air and my heavy breathing.
The wolf guided my hands to the tree, urging me to bend forward. The head of his cock bounced from one of my ass cheeks to the other, teasing me, driving me to damn delirium. Harkin brushed my hair away from my neck, displaying my nape where he’d licked and grazed his teeth before.
He pushed into my entrance slowly at first before plunging inside, his hips slapping against me when he filled me to the hilt.
Harkin pounded into me with abandon, pulling me on and off him.
He slid his forearm between my breasts, skirting his hand up my chest until he reached my neck, lightly grasping there.
My back arched into him, a desperate moan escaping my throat.
“I need it,” I moaned, not so much as a declaration as it was a plead.
Harkin lapped his tongue over my cheek. “I know, mate.”
Under the moonlight and stars as our witnesses, he drove into me over and over. Their radiance sparkled and shone. As if in celebration of what we were doing in the woods, the very place that molded us both.
Harkin’s girth grew wider, pulling a whimper from my throat from the fullness. I clenched around him, a pleased sigh shaking from my chest.
Harkin’s knot swelled, locking us together.
Knowing what was about to come next, I took hold of Harkin’s forearms. He stilled inside me and used his thumb and forefinger to tilt my head to the side.
Heat from the wolf’s breath coated my skin, the tip of his tongue caressing my nape.
When his canines plunged into my neck, I saw the stars beaming above us behind my eyelids.
It was nothing like a vampire’s kiss. This was something primal, claiming.
It was pure fucking rapture. The slight pinch of pain disappeared the moment he latched on, his tongue lapping at the blood pouring from the torn wound.
Without releasing his teeth, Harkin made slow, languid strokes with his hips, moving his knot closer to that spot inside.
My mouth gaped, and no sound slipped past my throat at first. A wolf’s canines sinking into my flesh, the tugging, the slide of his tongue at my skin, entwined me.
This was my wolf. The climax burst from my core without warning, my shrill cries loud enough to scare slumbering birds from the branches.
I dug my nails into Harkin’s arms, my body shaking, my pussy quaking around his knot.
Harkin grunted into my neck before liquid heat coated my insides.
Something had transformed at that instant.
An ache in my chest that I didn’t know existed melted away.
My mind became lighter and unburdened. Most of all, I yearned for him, despite what we were already doing.
We stayed like this for several moments, his canines still latched to my nape, his knot fully swollen and pulsing.
We were all pants, shaky breaths, and a shared sheen of sweat.
Harkin’s lip twitched against my skin as if he knew he had to let go at some point but didn’t want to.
Hells, I didn’t want him to. I was content to stay like this forever.
With an irritated snarl, Harkin released his canines from my neck. He lapped at the wound with his tongue, licking it over and over, his arm between my breasts pulling my back closer to him. “Can already smell me on you. All over you.”
Moaning, I grabbed the back of Harkin’s head, tangling his hair around my fingers. “Good. You smell delicious.”
“The Shaman said my scent will make it so shifters won’t be aware you’re a hybrid. It’ll mask it.” Harkin lazily licked his claim mark.
My vampiric healing was slower with this wound. It was as if the shifter side fought with it, telling it to leave it be.
“Your mark won’t fade away completely, will it?” I frowned.
“Nah.” Harkin smiled against my skin, his beard tickling me. “It’ll leave a light scar.”
I chewed on my lower lip. “Sorry I couldn’t actually lock us.”
“Are you kiddin’?” Harkin chuckled into my hair. “You were clamping onto me like a damned sealed jar, sugar.”
I scratched his scalp with my nails approvingly.
“Now if I can get my knot to settle the fuck down, there’s something I need you to do for me.”
“Oh?”
Harkin rested his forehead against the back of my shoulder.
He took deep breaths and moved his hands to rest on my hips.
I wanted to tease him more, but understood it would do nothing to help the knot deflate.
It took all my strength not to clench instinctively around him.
I focused on the grooves in the tree’s bark, counting them.
Eventually, but ever so slowly, his knot waned, and he could pull out.
To go from that to such emptiness had me digging my toes into the dirt. All wandering thought disappeared when Harkin spun me around. A new spark shone in Harkin’s gaze. He grinned down at me, all canine and alpha. Harkin bumped a knuckle under my chin and pressed a chaste kiss to my lips.
“Bite me, Rory,” Harkin whispered, his werewolf’s guttural tone sneaking out.
I searched his eyes. “Now?”
“This isn’t about drinkin’ my blood this time.” Harkin held my jaw. “I need you to tear into me. Scar me. Mark me too.” His gaze scorched.
My skin lit on fire.
“Can you do that for me, mate?” His fingers pressed harder, his eyes, filled with newfound desperation, held my gaze.
“Yes,” was all I said before grabbing the back of his head.
No preamble, no forewarning. I had a burning, raging desire to make him mine by any means.
Now that he’d given me a way, I wanted to claim him as well.
Locating the pulsing artery at the front of his neck, I plunged my fangs into his skin.
Harkin grunted and growled, his arm looping around my waist. Though I took several swallows of his delectable blood, I did something I had never done.
With my fangs still sunk into his flesh, I dragged downward.
Another satisfied snarl gurgled from the wolf’s chest. He bunched my hair in his grasp, making my scalp tingle.
After a few more pulls of his blood into my throat, I backed away with my teeth clenched, tearing a wound.
“Fuck,” Harkin moaned, his hand lifting to prop himself against the tree.
Between both of our claiming bites, blood was everywhere. It was on my face, dripping off my chin, my breasts. It coated Harkin’s beard, his neck and chest.
We grinned at each other, bloodied, marked, and officially, irrefutable mates.
I licked his wound, the same as he’d done with mine.
“Should clean up and get some new clothes before we meet the Shaman.” Harkin gave me a lazy smile. “What do you say?”
“I say—” I dragged my finger through my blood still coating Harkin’s lips and traced it over his chest in a heart shape. “—shower with me.”
We rushed to Harkin’s place. Waffles was a flurry of excited yips and zoomies. The wolf had told me to give him some attention while he warmed the shower. When he was ready for me, Harkin leaned on the bathroom doorframe, beckoning me with a bend of his claw.
With each other’s dried blood caking our bodies, we stepped into the shower together.
I moaned as soon as the steaming hot water splashed over my skin.
With his hand resting on my collarbones, Harkin moved me under the shower spout.
The water poured on my head, wetting my hair and blurring my vision in cascades over my eyelashes.
The wolf scrubbed his massive hands over my face and neck.
He traced circles around his mark on my nape.
He pressed a kiss to it, the water trickling through his dark hair.
When he lifted his head, his amber stare met mine, droplets falling from the tips of his wavy tendrils.
My gods he was handsome. Now, he was all mine. After all this time. Here he was. For me.
In kind, I rose to the tips of my toes, rubbing away the dried blood on his chest and working my fingers through his beard. The wound I’d left at his throat was still fresh, but the bleeding had stopped. I trailed my fingertip around it, proud and alive.
“Come here,” Harkin said, throaty and blunt.
He pulled me against him, kissing me with the shower raining down over our heads. We spent an hour using up all of Harkin’s hot water, kissing, cleaning blood from each other’s skin, and fucked once more with my ass pressed against the tiles.
Crimson spiraled down the drain in a ceaseless loop, much like the infinite time we would have together.
Finally.