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“Yes, Sterre. I’m the wisteria that will help.”

She nodded, and then she sank onto me in one smooth move that pulled a desperate groan from the depths of my chest. Yet she didn’t move, didn’t chase her pleasure. I cradled her to my body, her hair falling across my shoulder and beside my head on the pillow. She hummed, low in her throat, and wiggled against me.

After a minute, she relaxed again, her breathing evening out and her hands relaxing against my chest. I breathed in her scent as I traced shapes along her back. Without looking, I grabbed her ceremonial garb from the floor and used it to blot away the worst of the blood from the bonding bite. She clenched around me, and I swallowed a groan.

“You’re exquisite,” I murmured.

She only cuddled deeper, her nose buried in my throat.

AMETHYST

My head ached like I’d been blackout drunk, my pulse beating behind my eyes hard enough I wanted to just gouge them out. A similar pulsing centered just behind my clit and went deeper, throbbing through my entire pelvis and down the tops of my thighs. I groaned and twisted, pulling the blanket tighter around me. I hadn’t had period cramps so extreme since going on birth control in college.

God, I wanted some Midol.

First, I had to find the motivation to get up and stagger into the kitchen. Wisteria wrapped around me, stronger than any candle could ever be, and I breathed it in with a heady groan. Some of the throbbing behind my eyes lessened, though the cramps shooting down my thighs and around my hips only grew worse.

A door clicked closed, and then there was the shuffling of fabric. I slowly opened my eyes as confusion tore through me. There was someone moving, a shadow I could barely make out. I sat up with a scream, clutching the blanket to me even as the pulsing cramps got worse. Who was in my room?

A fire lit in a small jar a few feet from me, illuminating a small writing desk and a man’s face. His eyes were gold. I swallowed a second scream, trying to make sense of what was happening. What had I been doing before I’d fallen asleep? The man moved, not seemingly concerned with my fear at all, and a set of nasty, bone-white scars became visible on the left side of his face. Familiarity settled heavily in my stomach. I knew those scars. I’d traced them and learned about them. I’d seen the type of creature that had created them.

Wisteria floated around me again, and I breathed it in desperately. The man crouched in front of me and traced my jaw.

“Sterre,” he murmured.

A wealth of memories rushed in with the word, a hundred kisses shared in this dark room and days of sitting with my head in his lap while reading. Nights in his hold and nights alone while he was gone.

“Wisteria,” I whispered. A cramp rolled through my stomach and hips again, and I cried out. “Hurts.”

He nodded. “I’ll help it. It’ll go away for a little bit longer, I promise. Soon it won’t hurt at all. So, so soon. You’ve done such a good job through it all.”

I didn’t understand, but I didn’t really care. That scent was growing stronger, and I needed it. I grabbed for him, pulling him toward me. Wisteria was so strong on his skin. I pressed my nose into the hollow of his throat, sucking in deep gulps of air. His arms were warm, strong bands that he wrapped around me, deftly avoiding my hair.

“Knot,” I whispered.

“Yes,” he replied. He wrapped his hand around me and brought it to his cock, hard and ready between us. “It’ll help, too. Let me take the pain away for a little while longer.”

“Please.”

He covered me with his body, and I buried my hands in his hair, keeping my nose pressed to the crook of his shoulder, breathing in the wisteria.

CALLUM

I braided back my hair in the early morning light of the bathing room without bothering to use my magic to dry it, knowing it was only a matter of minutes before Amethyst awoke again in the throes of her heat. My stomach clenched at having to watch her have no memory of me, of my name or who I was to her. More than once, she’d called for Sloane when she first woke up, asking for serums I did not understand. And, once, she’d gasped that scumbag’s name when I’d turned toward her in the middle of the night, her scent wrapped around me more tightly than a set of stays.

I had never heard of such an experience when an omega went through their heats, but I doubted any had chronicled one who had grown up in a different realm. I suppose it could make sense. The heats brought them to their basest instincts, the memories most ingrained in them. If those were of her life in her Arizona, then the lack of understanding would at least make sense. I prayed to Persynthia that she would wake today knowing me.

I pulled on a set of sleeping pants but didn’t bother with a shirt, knowing she would need my skin available to lick and scent and touch. As if drawn by my thoughts, there was a rustling of the blankets in the adjacent bedroom. There was no pulse of arousal in the bond, though, only a quiet exhaustion.

“Callum?”

My knees weakened at her voice forming around my name. I hadn’t heard it at all these five days since our Freian rites had triggered her heat. I eyed the shirt I’d left on the vanity while I bathed.

“I… Oh god, I hope this isn’t a dream.”

With quick movements, I grabbed the shirt from the vanity, slipped it on, and walked back into the small bedroom. Amethyst sat in the center of the bed, the simple brown blanket pulled around her. Her hair fell down her back, a mass of black strands that I’d not gotten a chance to brush through yet today. There were deep circles under her eyes that mirrored my own, and most of the skin I could see was dotted with small bruises from my hands and my teeth. She’d needed more pain than I’d been comfortable with giving to keep her satiated, and the sight of the bruises had my stomach pitching.

She must have felt the sudden emotion in our bond. Her gaze snapped to me, and her shoulders sagged. Relief flooded the connection.