Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 112500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 563(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 563(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
She clung to his sweat-dampened shoulders, scoring his skin. “I do,” she moaned, words dripping with submission. “I belong to you now.” The rightness of this pushed her over the precipice just as he gave her a teeth-clattering thrust and a hard bounce along his rigid length. She rode him tip to base, and the tension broke halfway down. “Ah, Hecate, yes!” Her orgasm consumed her, her core squeezing his shaft as it plunged inside her relentlessly. She threw back her head and screamed in total surrender to this male. I’m his.
Eternally…
A truth she felt in her bones.
Gulping air, she cried, “Follow me.”
He tensed, and she craved the searing bath of semen that was sure to follow. A marking in itself.
Yet then…his eyes flared Lykae blue, sheening in the moonlight. His fangs sharpened. For the first time, she saw hints of his beast rising—to answer a call far older and truer than lust.
Ah, great goddess. “I am yours!” Of course. Nothing could be this powerful if it hadn’t been fated. Meera cupped his precious face, nails digging in possessively. “Claim me. Bite me. Mark me.”
***
Lowell
—YOURS YOURS YOURS!—
His long-quiet Instinct rang like a gong in his skull. He staggered under the force of it. “I canna…canna breathe.” Lowell tore back from the rake of Meera’s nails.
She nodded with understanding, still rolling her hips atop him. “This is why we’ve been so drawn to each other. It’s all right, love. It’s a big change and one we’ll work through.”
“Canna breathe.” The awakening inside him was too bright. Too absolute.
Not panic. Transcendence.
The promise of an interlocking soul curled on the wind; a ribbon of scent—pure and radiant and impossible—came from the direction of Bloodreach. His mind expanded. His heart and body. His beast awakened, swelling within him like a tidal wave.
Yet Lowell was inside Meera. And she thought she had elicited this response. Ah, gods, it’s no’ her.
Her.
His mate.
She was in the Skein. Closing in. Their souls already turning toward each other, moving to interlock into one beneath a full moon.
“Lowell, love.” Meera’s voice took on an ecstatic note that made his chest hurt. “Your fangs have sharpened for a reason.” She drew her hair from her neck, baring it with hope. “Mark me as yours. I’m ready.”
He recoiled, tearing free of her body and setting her away. Shame clawed up his throat, shame for the betrayal he’d committed against his pack, his king, his family, the sacred mate he hadn’t believed in.
His shaft, glistening and pulsing, drew the witch’s gaze. But he was now hard for another female.
“You didn’t come?” She glanced up in bewilderment, her body clearly craving more of his. “Do you want to savor this moment before the bite?” She arched closer, and revulsion tore through him; his stomach heaved.
“I scented another.”
She stilled. “Another? I don’t understand.”
“My mate.”
Two words. Iron clarity.
“Lowell, no.” Her tears gathered, breaths shallowing. “This can’t be happening.”
“I am sorry,” he choked out.
“You look as if you’re dying inside,” she whispered, eyes stark. “But excited too.”
“I dinna know. I dinna expect this for myself.”
“Have you forgotten that you promised me everything? You told me I’d never regret coming here. This is a done thing. We have sealed our pact. I have sealed my pact, making my own promises.” She peered up at the moon as if reading portents.
Straightening, she returned her gaze to him. “We’re just steps from the threshold. You will leave with me. You told me you would fight fate, and we can still escape it. Turn your back on the other female, and depart this world.”
“I canna ever leave her.” His voice broke. “I’ve been waiting for this all my life. Her soul calls to my own, and it’s like a godsdamned roar from the universe right at my ear.”
Meera held out a hand and raggedly said, “Distance will dull it.”
“No.” He shook his head. He didn’t want to hurt her more than he had to, but he needed to make her understand. “It’s like I’ve never lived before now.”
She gasped as though he’d stabbed her. “You said you loved me.”
“I thought I did.” He gripped his head, gazing off in the night, then back at Meera. “I think. Now I doona know anymore.”
“So everything between us…”
“Feels wrong. Feels twisted. I’m sorry.”
She wiped her tears, face hardening like stone. “Then felicitations.” Her voice went soft and lethal. “Go to your mate, scored from my nails and reeking of another woman’s pleasure. I’ll be sure to get your letter into her paws in the future. All the best with her.” Meera’s fury crackled in the air.
He flinched from its sting—feeling how easily she’d ensnared him with her magic and loneliness and longing. Clarity struck him. She had spellbound him. She’d taken over his thoughts, defeated his loyalty, and made him a craven slave for her.