Page 278 of May: Bloom & Bane

Her hooded eyes flutter open. “Rahnové… your skull… it’s glowing.”

I smile. “It’s been glowing for two days, sweetheart.”

“No… not flaming—glowing.” Her fingers trace over my jaw, and heat blooms along every fracture I gave myself on that canyon floor. The cracks I earned screaming her name back into my own head. I lean into her palm, and in the black mirror of her blown pupils I catch thin rivers of molten orange threading through my skull, pulsing in time with the mark on her throat. The exact copper of her hair. The exact color of the first thing I ever loved.

“The bond is sealing what broke,” Sage breathes in awe.

“It’s not sealing it,” I rasp, watching the light spill through every fracture. “It’s keeping it.”

Every crack I put in this skull, I put there fighting to remember her. And now the bond has filled every one with her, so that my damage tells the story. Anyone who looks at me will see it written into my bones: this one broke for her. This one was repaired with her.

“You’re beautiful,” she whispers, both palms cradling my glowing skull.

“I’m yours,” I correct. “It’s the same thing.”

“Now,” she whispers, rolling her hips, making us both groan at once. “Show me what being yours looks like.”

We move slowly at first, learning together, shadow and vine holding her exactly where she needs to be. And then not slowly at all. Every thrust lands twice, her body caught between us with nowhere to go but deeper. Her palms stay on my skull the whole time, fingers tracing the cracks. Every pass of her hand over the fractures sends fire straight down our spine.

The mark on her throat pulses gold. “I can feel you everywhere.”

“It’s going to be like this from now on,” I rasp, every snap of my hips driving her closer. “You will never feel anything but full again.”

Sage’s hand slides between us, rubbing over her clit in little circles. “You’re taking both of us so well, mí’peora.”

I thrust harder, feeling Sage’s slick cock slide against mine. Her nails dig into my skull.

“Ohhh—just like that. Don’t stop,” she moans.

“Open your eyes, Eden.” I catch her chin and tilt her face upward so there is nowhere for her to hide from me. “I want to see the exact second my venom breaks you. I want to stare into your soul while you drown in us.”

She listens, her wide, green eyes peeking open.

“You’re such a good fucking girl. I love watching you obey me.”

Her body responds instantly. Her pussy clamps around our cocks, spasming so hard it milks every drop out of us. Thick ropes of come pulse deep inside, filling her until it leaks out around our shafts. She whimpers through her clenched teeth, thighs shaking as we keep thrusting through the orgasm, forcing more come into her already overflowing lavína.

My kná begins to swell. I press her hips down slowly, working the hard ridge of bone past her fluttering entrance. “This body was built to keep you, ash’kaela. Every part of it. Let me in.”

Her stretched walls give one final surrender, and my knot slides inside and locks, bone flaring wide, sealing us together so completely that every pulse of come has nowhere to go but deeper.

“There,” I groan against her mark. “Locked, full, and mated. Do you feel how full you are? That’s mine and Sage’s, kept inside you where it belongs—and you are not going anywhere for a very, very long time.”

“So that’s what the sky is for,” she slurs.

“No, my love.” I press my lips to her hair. “That’s what forever is for.”

CHAPTER 85

clearance

—EDEN

One week later⁠—

If someone told me seven months ago that I would spend my third trimester curled up like a pampered queen inside a giant basket of woven willow branches, buried beneath fleece blankets and cloud-silk, while an eight-foot fertility reaper and a scarred warrior argued over the structural integrity of a baby crib… I would have told them to check themselves into the nearest asylum.

Yet, here I am.