Page 44 of The Alien Minotaur's Bride

I nodded. My hands found his shoulders, fingers digging into the dense fur.

"Move," I said. "Please."

He moved.

The rhythm built between us – slower than the heat-driven urgency of before, more intentional. Each thrust was deep and thorough, pulling sounds from my throat that I couldn't have silenced if I tried. His mouth moved from my breasts to my throat, nuzzling the curve where my neck met my shoulder.

"Here," he murmured against my skin. "The mark will go here. Everyone will see it. Everyone will know."

"Yes." The word came out broken. "Keth – yes–"

The pleasure crested. I felt myself climbing towards something vast and inevitable, my body coiling tighter with each thrust. His knot was swelling, pressing against my entrance, and I knew – I knew – that when it locked into place, everything would change.

"Now," I gasped. "Keth – now–"

His teeth sank into my shoulder.

The pain was sharp and bright, there and gone in an instant. In its place: a flood of sensation that crashed through me like a wave, pulling me under, remaking me from the inside out. The knot breached me, locking us together, and I came so hard the edges of everything dissolved.

And through it all – threaded through the pleasure and the pain and the overwhelming rightness of it – I felt him.

Not just his body against mine. Not just his scent around me. His emotions, pouring through the bond like water through a broken dam. Three rotations of longing. Three rotations of certainty. A devotion so complete it had no edges, no limits, no end.

He was mine.

I was his.

The bond locked into place, permanent and irreversible, written into our bodies at the deepest level.

The silence afterwards was different.

We lay tangled together on the ruined pallet, his knot still holding us locked, my face pressed against his chest. I could feel his heartbeat under my cheek – slower now, finally settling. His hand moved in slow strokes down my back.

Outside the room, I could hear movement. Voices, hushed and urgent. The facility staff, probably, finally working up the courage to investigate.

They would smell it the moment they got close enough.

The mating scent was everywhere. Flooding the room, rolling out into the corridor, announcing to everyone in range that something fundamental had just changed. I was marked. Bonded. Permanently, legally, biologically his.

Vorreth's challenge had just collapsed.

"They'll be coming," I said quietly.

"Let them come." His arm tightened around me. "There's nothing they can do. The bond is complete. You're mine."

"I'm yours."

He pressed his mouth to the top of my head. I felt him smile against my hair.

The door – what was left of it – scraped against the floor as someone pushed it aside. I heard a sharp inhale, then a muffled curse. Footsteps retreating rapidly.

They knew.

Everyone knew, now.

I stayed where I was, wrapped in his arms, the warm weight of his scent over me, the fresh bite on my shoulder throbbing gently with each heartbeat.

I'd chosen this. Fully, freely, with all of myself.