Chapter 5
Kess
The wound gapes for a heartbeat—I can see the white of his windpipe, the pulsing red of the artery beneath—then starts to close. Dragon healing knitting flesh back together like invisible fingers sewing meat. Fast, but not instant.
He doesn't make a sound.
Just stands there, frozen, one hand coming up to touch his throat. His fingers come away slick and dark. He stares at the blood coating his palm like he's never seen his own before. Like he can't quite believe I drew it from him.
Then he looks at me.
And smiles.
It's the most terrifying thing I've ever seen. All teeth—too many teeth, canines elongated into fangs that gleam red with his own blood. All hunger. All violence. All desperate, savage joy.
The smile of something that's been starving for three hundred years and finally found prey that bites back.
"Yes," he breathes, and the word is barely human. "Yes."
His beast roars.
The sound explodes through the grove—pure dragon-voiced fury that resonates in my chest like thunder, like the earth itself is splitting open beneath us.
The force of it is physical. Leaves rip from branches.
Wood cracks and falls. The altar shakes so hard beneath me that I feel my bones rattle against the stone.
Every animal instinct I possess screams run.
I bare my bloody teeth and snarl at him instead.
Then he's on me.
Moving faster than anything that size should move. One moment he's standing there with blood running down his chest in dark rivers. The next he's right there, his body a wall of heat and violence, blocking out the last of the dying light.
I slash at him with the knife. Wild. Desperate. Catch his chest—two shallow cuts across his pectorals that open like hungry mouths.
He doesn't even flinch.
His hand closes around my wrist like an iron shackle and slams it down against the stone. Something cracks—bone or ancient rock, I can't tell which. White-hot pain explodes up my arm from wrist to shoulder. My fingers spasm open, nerveless and useless.
The knife falls.
Clatters away across blood-warm stone. Spins once. Stops just out of reach.
Gone.
Fuck.
I lunge for it with my free hand, fingers scrabbling at smooth stone slick with our mingled blood. So close. Almost—
He catches my other wrist. Pins it down beside the first. Holds both my hands trapped against the altar while his body settles over mine, caging me in heat and muscle and three hundred years of predator instinct.
I'm caught.
Pinned beneath a rut so violent it radiates off him in waves I can taste on my tongue—smoke and need and something that makes my hindbrain whimper.
I should be terrified.
Instead my heat spikes so hard I nearly shatter from that alone.
The fever is unbearable now, a wildfire raging beneath my skin. Every inch of me feels too tight, too hot, like I'm being cooked from the inside out. Sweat runs down my temples, between my breasts, pools in the hollow of my throat like an offering.
And I can feel everything.
Every scar under my palms where he's pinned my wrists—raised ridges and smooth valleys, a braille history of damage done and healed over centuries.
Every muscle pressing into me like he's trying to fuse us together.
His chest against mine, solid as the altar stone and burning twice as hot.
His thighs bracketing mine like a cage. His stomach against my belly, defined ridges flexing with each harsh breath he takes.
The furnace-heat of him. He's impossibly warm, like lying too close to a bonfire, like pressing my palm to sun-heated metal. It should be unbearable.
Instead it feels perfect against my fever-skin. Like we were made to burn together.
His cock.
Hard and thick against my thigh through the thin dress.
I can feel it pulsing, each throb matching his heartbeat—matching mine.
The head presses against my lower belly, blunt and broad and hot enough to brand me through the fabric.
Below that, the thick shaft with veins standing out in ridges I can trace even through cloth.
And at the base, a subtle swelling. Not fully formed yet.
The knot.
My heat roars in response like a beast waking from hibernation. Slick floods between my thighs, soaking through the dress until the white fabric is translucent and obscene. My hips buck up without my permission, seeking pressure, seeking friction, seeking him.
No.
Fight.
Kill him.
I arch up off the stone and sink my teeth into his shoulder.
Deep. Deeper than the knife went. My lengthened canines punch through skin like it's nothing, through the layer of fat beneath, into muscle that parts around my fangs like raw meat under a butcher's blade.
Blood explodes into my mouth.
Hot. Metallic. Overwhelming. It tastes like copper and woodsmoke and something wild underneath that has no name—something that makes my heat surge higher, makes the rage and need tangle together like mating snakes until I can't separate one from the other.
I swallow it down and it burns all the way to my stomach, settles there like coals.
He makes a sound.
Not pain. Nothing close to pain. A groan torn from somewhere deep in his chest—raw and guttural and purely animal. Pleasure-pain that makes his whole body shudder against mine like he's been struck by lightning.
"Harder," he growls against my temple, his breath hot on my skin. "Bite harder."
I do.
His hips jerk forward, grinding his cock against me with enough force to drag the thin fabric tight across my skin. The friction is perfect and terrible, a promise and a threat wrapped together.
The groan becomes a growl. Low. Vibrating through his chest into mine until I feel it in my bones, in my teeth still buried in his flesh, in my core that clenches around nothing, desperate and empty and aching to be filled.
I tear my teeth free with a wet sound.
His blood runs down my chin in dark streams, drips onto my chest, pools in the hollow between my breasts.
Before he can recover, I go for his throat.
The killing blow. The one that matters.
But he's fast. Faster than he should be with a mouthful of muscle torn from his shoulder. He jerks back just enough that my teeth miss his throat, catch his chest instead.
Above his heart.
I bite until my jaw aches like it might crack. Until I feel my canines scrape against the hard curve of his sternum. Until blood fills my mouth so full I have to swallow or choke on it.
"There," he breathes, and his voice sounds like gravel being crushed. "Right there. Mark me."
I don't want to mark him. I want to kill him.
But my teeth don't stop.
His hands leave my wrists.
Finally.
But before I can claw at his eyes or grab for the fallen knife, his hands are on my hips. Fingers digging in hard enough to bruise.
I feel the moment he decides to stop holding back.
Feel his fingers spasm. Feel claws extend with little pops as they punch through the tips of his fingers like blades unsheathing.
Four sharp points on each hip. Pressing through the thin fabric like it's cobweb. Through skin that parts like butter under a hot blade.
The pain is bright and immediate, a lightning strike that cuts through the heat-haze for one clear second before being swallowed by the rising tide of need.
I gasp against his chest. The sound is broken. Half pain, half something else I don't want to name.
"I can smell your blood," he says, and his voice is wrecked beyond recognition. Barely human. "Smells like fire. Like rage. Like mine."
Then he rips the dress.
One savage motion—hands moving in opposite directions, claws shredding fabric and skin together. The sound is obscene, wet tearing that echoes through the silent grove like a scream.
Cool evening air hits my overheated skin and I arch into it like a dying thing seeking water.
But there's no relief.
Only his body covering mine. Pressing me into the warm stone. His claws sinking deeper into my hips, past skin, into the meat of me.
Drawing blood.
My blood this time. Hot and wet where his hands grip me. I feel it welling up around each claw, thin rivers running down my sides to pool beneath me on the ancient stone. The altar drinks it in greedily—three hundred years of blood and death have taught it to be thirsty.
He's shaking.
Fine tremors running through muscle and bone like fault lines before an earthquake. Three hundred years of iron control trying desperately to hold. Trying not to kill me the way he killed all the others. Trying to be gentle when his beast is screaming for violence.
I don't want gentle.
Don't want control.
Want him as feral as I am. Want him as lost to this madness as I'm lost. Want to drag him down into the dark with me.
I rake my nails down his back.
They're sharper now, heat-changed into something between human and predator.
I feel skin part beneath them like fabric tearing—not the shallow scratches human nails would leave but deep furrows that well with blood immediately.
Four lines down each side of his spine, parallel and precise as the scars he carved into his own ribs.
His breath catches like he's been punched.
His whole body goes rigid above me. Every muscle locked tight. And for a heartbeat—just one heartbeat—his eyes flash gold through the black.
Human consciousness surfacing through the rut like a drowning man breaking water.
He sees me. Really sees me. The omega pinned beneath him with blood painting her mouth and violence burning in her eyes. The one fighting instead of submitting. The one carving wounds into him instead of begging for mercy.
"Kess," he says, and my name sounds like a prayer and a curse and a goodbye all tangled together in his ruined throat.
Then the gold is swallowed by black again.
Only beast remains.
He shifts his grip on my hips. Claws sink deeper—I feel the points scrape against bone now, feel tissue tearing in ways that should make me scream. Blood flows freely from the wounds, hot rivers running down my sides to feed the hungry altar.
I should be in agony.