Page 11 of Beast’s Temptation

They lay tangled together as the knot slowly subsided, their breathing gradually evening out. When he finally softened enough to slip free of her body, he mourned the loss of connection even as relief flooded through him. They had done it. They belonged to each other now, in ways that nothing could undo.

The sunset bells began to toll, distant but unmistakable.

Sorek pressed a kiss to Tamsin's forehead and rose from the pallet. His legs were unsteady, his whole body wrung out from the intensity of what they'd shared, but his mind was clear.

"It's time."

She caught his hand as he reached for his robes. "Sorek. Whatever happens out there... I'm not sorry. I'll never be sorry."

He brought her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. "Neither will I."

They dressed in silence, the intimacy of the act another kind of bonding. He helped her with her fastenings, she smoothed the creases from his robes. When they were both presentable, he took her hand and led her toward the door.

The council waited. The consequences waited. A world without priesthood, without the identity he'd built over three decades, waited somewhere beyond this chamber.

But Tamsin's hand was in his, and her heartbeat echoed in his chest, and for the first time in his life, Sorek walked into an uncertain future without fear.

He had everything he needed right here.

5

TAMSIN

The council stripped him of his markings at moonrise, and Tamsin watched him scream.

She stood at the edge of the ceremonial chamber, her nails digging crescents into her palms, her jaw clenched so hard her teeth ached. The other Priests had tried to make her wait outside, had insisted that this ritual wasn't meant for outsider eyes, but Sorek had stopped them with a single look.

"She stays." His voice had been steady, even knowing what was coming. "She has earned the right to witness what she caused."

The words could have been an accusation. From anyone else, they would have been. But she felt his meaning through the bond that now connected them, felt the fierce protectiveness beneath the surface. He didn't want her to feel guilty. He wanted her to understand what he was giving up, so she would never doubt the depth of his choice.

So she stayed. And she watched.

The Elder Priests surrounded him in a loose circle, their markings glowing with concentrated power. Sorek knelt in the center, stripped to the waist, his own markings exposed for what would be the last time. Thirty years of devotion inscribed on his skin in gold and copper sigils, each one earned through meditation and sacrifice, each one about to be burned away.

The first mark went with a hiss of displaced air and the smell of scorched flesh. Sorek's body jerked, but he didn't cry out. Not yet. His hands were fisted on his thighs, his eyes fixed on some distant point beyond the chamber walls.

The second mark. The third. Each one accompanied by that terrible hissing sound, that acrid smell, that involuntary flinch of pain. Tamsin felt echoes of it through the bond, phantom burns along her own skin, and she had to lock her knees against the urge to collapse.

By the tenth mark, he was shaking visibly. By the twentieth, sweat poured down his face and mingled with tears he couldn't suppress. By the thirtieth, the screaming began.

It wasn't a sound of weakness. It was a sound of release, of thirty years of suppressed sensation finally finding an outlet. He screamed as each mark was stripped away, screamed until his voice went hoarse and broke, and still the Elders continued their methodical work.

Tamsin gripped her own hands so hard she drew blood. She wanted to stop this. Wanted to throw herself between him and the Priests, wanted to burn this whole temple to the ground for what they were doing to him. But she understood, through the bond, that he needed to face this. Needed to let go of everything he'd been before he could become what he was meant to be.

So she stayed. She watched. She didn't look away.

When it was finally over, Sorek slumped forward, barely conscious. His torso was a ruin of raw, scarred flesh where his markings had been, and his breathing came in ragged gasps that sounded like sobs. The Elder Priest stepped forward, his voice resonant with ritual authority.

"You are cast out," Vethros intoned. "No longer a servant of the twin suns. No longer a member of this order. You will leave this temple before the dawn and never return."

Sorek raised his head. His eyes were bloodshot, his face gray with pain, but when he looked at Tamsin, something like peace settled over his features.

"Now I'm free," he said, and his voice was steadier than she'd expected, "to be hers completely."

They gave them until dawn to gather their belongings and leave. It wasn't much time, but there wasn't much to gather. Sorek's possessions fit into a single small bag: a meditation mat, a set of prayer beads he would no longer use, a book of scripture that the council hadn't thought to confiscate.

Tamsin helped him dress in simple traveling clothes, careful to avoid the raw patches where his markings had been. The wounds would heal, she knew. Khorani physiology was resilient, and within a few weeks, only scars would remain. But watching him wince as fabric brushed against burned flesh made her chest ache with helpless fury.