AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Sharper, but also jagged, they cut and rend my flesh both as he bites and releases.
“I’m sorry.” He pulls away and wipes the saliva and blood off my neck. “It’s not meant to be sexy or fun. It’s supposed to hurt.”
I hold a hand to my neck. “Why?”
Rook locks eyes with me. “It’s meant to represent the good times and the bad.”
“Will it heal?” I ask, a sharp pain shooting up my jaw and down my neck.
“It already has.”
I finger the spot, disbelieving, but he’s right. The wound is completely healed. “It still hurts like a motherfucker.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry. That’s part of the process. It’s why we don’t really practice formal bonding anymore.”
“Well?” Jonah asks. “So are you bonded? Can you feel him?”
“I mean, right now, I mostly feel like a stuffed turkey in need of a shower.”
Rook and I lock eyes once more, each of us knowing.
It didn’t work.
I’ve already reached out to him. Already tried to find the spot in my heart where he should be.
But there’s nothing.
No Rook.
“It might take some time,” Drago offers, expertly reading our expressions.
“Yeah. We had to sleep and eat before ours locked in the first time, Will. Who knows how long it might take to lock in between a wolf and a mage?”
I nod, not wanting to continue the line of thought.
So, the five of us stand there, waiting until four of us unlock from one another, in awkward silence.
After a perfunctory shower, I stand in front of the foggy mirror examining the marks each of my guys has given me. I twist to see Rafe’s mark on my shoulder with its silvery sheen, and barely there indentations. Drago’s perfect arch of bottom teeth look like a black tattoo on the front of my opposite shoulder. I turn to see the back, where his top row sunk in, and that too is black like his scars.
I run my fingers along Jonah’s mark on the right side of my neck. It’s raised and full of heat. It’s not uncomfortable, or irritated. His mark is simply warmer than the rest of me.
While Rook’s mark on the left side of my neck is jagged and angry-looking. It’s red at the margins, and each spot where his teeth broke my skin is rimmed in dried blood.
There is no magic in that mark.
It’s simply a bite.
I flex my hands around the basin as the implication sinks in. The material breaks off in large chunks in my hands and before my hands fully shift into the Werebitch’s hands, I stuff her back down.
The claiming didn’t work.
It didn’t work.
And I don’t know how to make it work.
Chapter23
The Feast, The Witch, and the Presents
