Except we’re not alone.
I can feel their eyes on us, their hunger a palpable wave that brands my skin and makes me that much hotter.
They’re not marked.
They’re not bleeding.
I want to claw at them, too. Sink my nails into their flesh and tear, then drink from their wounds.
What is wrong with me?I marvel, my mind clouding with foreign urges and intense feelings.
I feel reborn. Like a brand new shifter. Like I’m finally the wolf I was always meant to be.
It’s freeing and suffocating at the same time.
Lively and deafening.
Overwhelming and right.
A finger trails down my spine, the touch molten against my skin. Lips caress my shoulder, Caius’s warm breath against my ear as he says, “You’re stunning, Clove.”
The praise goes right to my heart, causing it to skip another beat.
I can barely breathe.
And yet, when I inhale, it’s a cloud of musk and male. Peppermint. Pine trees. And coppery ash.
My thighs clenches. Those scents are undoing me, making me want to kneel for reasons I can only begin to understand.
This is what my claiming should have felt like.
The day I embraced my mate.
Not all the pain and death.
But this beautiful heat filled with renewed life and meaning.
I lean forward to lick Tieran’s chest again. He rumbles in response, the sound part growl, part purr. I sigh, utterly captivated by that vibration. I want to melt into him. Do whatever he needs so long as he quells this storm brewing inside me.
His hand remains on my nape, holding me close to him.
He’s aroused.
I feel the brand of his heat against my lower belly through his jeans. It takes restraint not to remove them. Somehow I know that’s the wrong thing to do.
He’s in charge now.
Hell, he’s always been in charge.
And while part of me wants to defy that, tochallengehim, another part of me longs to bathe in that superiority and allow him to be my guide.
It’s a conundrum I don’t understand.
A mixture of fates that don’t blend well with each other.
How can I want to submit and challenge him in the same thought?
Volt’s mouth meets my opposite shoulder, his identity easily known because of his scent. He’s the source of copper and ash.
