Lunaria shattered twicebefore he let himself inside her.
His name on her lips. Her fingers in his hair, pulling too hard, scratching down his back. The sounds she made—desperate, needy, utterly undone. He catalogued every one, stored them all.
When he finally slid home, they both groaned.
“Luna.” Her name came out reverent, broken. He held himself still, buried to the hilt, giving her time to adjust. She was tight around him, slick and hot, her body welcoming him in ways that made his lion howl.
“Move.” Her legs wrapped around his waist, heels digging into his lower back. “Hux, please?—”
He moved.
Slow at first, despite the animal urge to take her hard and fast. Long strokes that drew sharp sounds from her throat. A rhythm designed to build rather than destroy. He wanted her right at the edge when he claimed her. Wanted her so overwhelmed with pleasure that the bite became part of it.
His lion approved.
He increased the pace, watching her face, reading the signs he’d learned over weeks of loving her. The way her breath caught when he hit that spot inside. The way her nails scored his shoulders when she got close. The flush spreading across her chest, her throat, her cheeks.
“I can feel you,” he ground out. “Getting close. Let go for me.”
“Not without you.” Her eyes met his—dark and fierce and absolutely certain. “I want us to fall at the same time.”
At the same time.
He shifted his angle, hitting deeper, driving them both toward the edge. His lion was fully at the surface now—golden light flooding his vision, instincts screamingclaim, claim, claim. He could feel his canines lengthening, the predator rising to meet its mate.
“Luna.” His mouth found her left shoulder, the spot he’d been preparing for. He scraped his teeth across her skin, and she shuddered. “When I bite?—”
“I know.” Her hand came up to cradle the back of his head, holding him there. “I want it. I want you. All of you.”
“It might not work. The bond—the curse?—”
“I don’t care.” She pulled his head up, forced him to look at her. Fire in her eyes. Certainty. Love. “I choose you, Hux Holt. Curse or no curse. Bond or no bond. Whatever happens next, I choose you.”
A lock he hadn’t known existed turned inside him. A door swung open to a room he’d boarded up long ago, convinced no one would ever want to enter.
“Then I claim you.” His voice wasn’t entirely human anymore. “As my mate. My partner. Mine.”
He drove into her one last time—hard and deep—and sank his teeth into her shoulder.
Pain first.Sharp and immediate, her blood on his tongue.
Then everything else.
The world exploded into sensation. Lunaria cried out beneath him—not in pain but in wonder, something that sounded like revelation. Her body clenched around him, orgasm crashing through her in waves, and he followed her over the edge with a roar he couldn’t contain.
But that wasn’t the important part.
The important part was what came after. The rush of warmth that flooded through him, starting from where his teeth met her flesh and spreading outward. The sudden, impossible awareness of her—not in his head, not telepathy, but deeper. Knowledge of where she was. Knowledge that she was his.
The emptiness that had defined his entire existence... contracted.
It didn’t disappear. The curse was still there, still eating at his potential. But now had a small, warm flame burning at its center.
Luna.
He could sense her—not her thoughts, not her emotions, but herpresence. A soft awareness at the edge of his consciousness, telling him exactly where she was. In his arms. In his bed.His.
His lion purred with satisfaction. Decades of silence, decades of barely stirring, and now it was awake and content and utterly certain that everything had clicked into place.
