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I took another bite of my food, and he took one of his. After he’d swallowed, he cleared his throat. “There’s something I must confess to you.”

My stomach clenched. “You’re in love with someone else?”

He snorted. “Hell no.”

The response shouldn’t have relaxed me, but it did.

“I have certain… instincts. All male fae do.” He cleared his throat again, and his lips turned downward. Mine curved upward, because Quake—Odin—never got uncomfortable, like he clearly was.

I’d already heard about his instincts, though, from Ivy and a few of the female water fae when they came to bring us food outside their land.

And I’d definitelyfeltsaid instincts, always at night. It rarely occurred when he wasn’t sane, so not super often, and had stopped for the most part after Harper had talked to him.

But yeah. I’d felt them. Or seen them, I supposed, though the way Quake saw was more in feeling than anything else, if the magic-induced sex dreams were anything to go off of.

He continued, “Because fate has connected us, and we haven’t sealed our mate bond through marriage and sex, the instincts push me to claim you, physically. To cover you and fill you with my scent, as a way to mark you as mine so that the other males understand who you belong to. I know it’s a bit ridiculous, but it’s part of the reason our culture insists men do not talk to women who are partway through the mating process—because anything that could possibly trigger a partially-mated male, could lead to unnecessary murder.”

Damn.

My face was hot again—and the rest of me was a little hot too. Hearing him talk aboutfilling me with his scentprobably shouldn’t have been a turn-on, but yeah, it totally was.

“The instincts are easier to control when there is distance between us—physical and emotional. The more we interact, the stronger they will become.”

“Alright. So, what do you want to do about it?” I asked him quietly.

“There’s nothing to do about it,” he admitted. “Even if we were to seal the bond through the mating ceremony, the only way to truly silence them is by having sex.”

“What happens if we don’t silence them?”

His expression became grave. “I will be an animal, lost to them at times. But I can teach you to use your magic to hold me off, until I can snap out of it.”

My eyebrows shot upward. “Is there a way to quiet them without shutting them off completely?”

He grimaced.

I waited.

“Oral sex,” he finally said. “It would make you smell like me, which would calm the beast inside me.”

Right.

Great.

Honestly? I was game.

But I wasn’t ready to tell him that.

“I feel those instincts when you’re sleeping, sometimes. It’s really intense,” I said instead of speaking my mind.

His jaw clenched. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize for something that isn’t your fault. I have instincts too, remember? They lead to me being a bitch.”

His jaw clenched tighter. “You’re trying to protect yourself. It isn’t the same.”

“Isn’t it? Some part of you is terrified enough of losing your mate that it insists you claim her as a way to hold on to her. Isn’t that some type of self-defense, too?”

He didn’t answer that question.

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