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I shuddered as a surprised groan escaped me.
Her touching me. Her blood flowing beneath veins that marked us as the same but somehow totally different...
I’d never felt anything so right.
My moon mark scorched with fresh blood, delivering a deeper punishment. Fire licked between us, consuming me with so many things I wanted to remember but couldn’t.
I sank into it.
I gave myself over to the decimating burn.
She opened her mouth to scream; true terror glowed in her stare. I hated that I’d scared her, but I couldn’t let her go. Not yet. I had to know. Had to remember.
Please...let me remember!
She screamed. Loudly. Far, far too loudly.
Instincts roared through me. I planted a palm over her lips, drowning beneath a fresh wave of crackling potency from touching her.
For a heartbeat, she let me hold her.
Her amber eyes glowed and her nostrils flared, but she didn’t move, as if shock had rendered her useless. But then fear crashed over her again, and she bit me.
She sank her teeth into my palm, ripping her face from my hold.
I growled and yanked my hand away, shaking out the pain from her shallow teeth. The current that licked between us still flowed, making me shake. Even apart, my fingers continued to burn as if I’d just held the sun.
Stumbling backward, she gasped and shook her head, hair sheeting over her shoulders. Glancing down, she swiped at her upper thigh, a shocked moan escaping her as her fingers came away bloody.
I almost collapsed to my knees.
She has a mark.
I tripped forward. “It is you. It has to be. You’re the one I’ve been dreaming about. The one I lost before everything was stolen.”
She held up her crimson-stained fingers, backing away as I stumbled toward her, my heart faltering with so many things. So much hope. So, so much hope.
She spoke in a tongue I didn’t understand but her body language blared what she wanted: stay back. Don’t touch me.
I scowled.
Didn’t she get it? I’d found her. After all this time.
Why wasn’t she happy about this?
Why wasn’t she leaping into my arms and slipping right back where she belonged?
I raised my hand again, this time softer, slower, without so much swiftness and threat. Maybe it would take time for her to remember me? Maybe her memories were as tangled as mine? I could wait. I’d waited far longer than I could remember to find her. I could wait a little longer for her to find me.
“It’s okay,” I murmured, forcing a smile, doing my best not to strike yet more worry into her stunning, unfamiliar eyes. “I know you. I’m sure of it. I might not recognise your face and my mind might be blank, but I know it’s you. I know just from the way my blood reacts to yours.”
I pointed at her bleeding leg, to the mark etched into her right thigh—the exact same position as mine. The similarities and the awareness between us sent shivers down my spine. “You have a mark like mine.” I patted my own bleeding thigh, capturing the residue of lifeforce flowing from me. I presented my blood to her as if it held every clue as to why I’d forgotten her and how the connection between us had somehow drawn me back to her. “See?” I breathed. “We are the same.”
She froze, sucking in a breath. She frowned as if she couldn’t understand.
Impatience filled me. I had so much to say. So many words that I’d had no one to share with. I wanted to tell her that the constant hollowness within me had faded the moment I’d touched her. That the aching insistence to keep searching had eerily vanished. Every droplet in my body had been searching for her, and now that we were together again?
I couldn’t describe the solace she gave me.
“You don’t need to be afraid of me,” I murmured, hating the way she flinched and hovered on the balls of her feet as if to bolt. She stared at me as if I was a wolf and she was a lowly deer, a doe facing down death. “I would never hurt you. Do you understand? I could never.” I shook my head at the very concept of causing her pain.
Giving up on words, seeing as she continued to stare at me blankly, I thought of other ways to communicate.
Animals spoke without words all the time.
Moving closer to her, I stopped as she tripped backward.
Holding up my hands so she knew I meant no harm, I bowed my head and retraced my steps away, even though it hurt to put distance between us. I tried to think of ways to tell her that she was mine now. That I’d been searching for far longer than I remembered, and she was safe. With me. She would always be safe with me.
