“So fucking tight,” I gritted out, sweat beading at my temples as I drove into her. “You’re mine, Rhea. Mine to ruin. Mine to worship.”
The heat between us didn’t just build, it combusted. The deeper I thrust, the more it flared, like the friction of our bodies had ignited something beneath the surface of our skin. But this wasn’t just fire. This was something molten and ancient, spreading through my chest and spine like liquid gold.
My senses overloaded. Her scent, her voice, her tight, perfect heat clenching around me, it all fused into one overwhelming rush that drowned everything else out. I could feel her heart beating in time with mine, not just beneath her skin, butinsideme. Each moan she gave fed directly into my bloodstream, like her pleasure was the only thing that kept me alive.
She gasped beneath me, going still for a second, but it wasn’t from pain. It was from the shock offeeling it too.
Her walls fluttered around my cock like her body recognized me on a level deeper than flesh. My hands gripped her tighter, pulling her back onto each stroke, unable to stop the way my hips snapped forward with more force, more need.
Everything felt heightened. The drag of my cock inside her made my nerves spark. Her slick, the soft give of her thighs, the curve of her back beneath my hands, every detail seared into my awareness.
I wasn’t just inside her. I wasfusingwith her.
My jaw clenched. A groan ripped from my throat as that tightness wrapped itself around my spine, pulling, demanding, claiming. It was like the world was narrowing to one point, where we touched, where we joined, where thetruthof us ignited.
My chest ached. Not from exertion, but from the pressure swelling in every part of me. Her. Us. The force of what we were becoming.
This was not just sex. This was power flooding my veins. A pull I felt beneath the skin, under every layer of flesh and bone. Itdragged at my soul until I could not deny what had taken root between us.
I felt her pulse in mine. Every thrust, every sound she made poured through me like fire. I had never known a connection like this. My body had claimed others. My hands had taken. My mouth had branded. But this was permanence. This was irreversible.
She was mine.
Not as a conquest. Not as territory. But as the single truth that now defined my existence. Nothing could sever it. No distance, no time, no force in this world. It was already done.
She was my mate.
And I would never let her go.
The knowledge came like lightning. Not gentle or slow. Blinding. Instant. I would kill for her. Die for her. Rebuild the world if it meant keeping her in it. There was no version of reality that did not have her wrapped in my arms, tethered to me with this primal bond. She was the ache I had carried long before I ever saw her clearly. The hollow ache in my chest that no power ever soothed. She was the answer to questions I never knew I was asking.
My wolf had chased power. Chased victory. But he had only ever been hungry for her. Now I had her. And still I could not stop. I could not slow down. I would never pull away.
Because I had never felt anything like her. And I never would again.
5
— • —
Rhea
Dawn light filtered through heavy curtains when consciousness returned in fragments. Every muscle protested movement, marked by activities my virgin body had never experienced. The royal suite smelled like sex and violence, like heat madness and claiming. Silk sheets worth more than my family’s monthly income stuck to my sweat-dampened skin. Memory returned in flashes: teeth at my throat, claws leaving marks, his voice commanding submission.
I turned to find Damon already awake, propped on one elbow studying me with unreadable black eyes. His chest bore my scratch marks, proof of my omega claws emerging during our frenzy. The sight should have shamed me. Instead, possessive satisfaction purred through my chest. He’d been marked too, branded by my heat as thoroughly as I bore his claim. Themating bite throbbed on my neck, still fresh enough to sting when air touched it.
I shifted, trying to sit up, and pain shot through the wound. The movement made me aware of other aches, deeper ones that spoke of how thoroughly he’d claimed me. How many times? Memory blurred together in a haze of need and satisfaction, of his hands positioning me and his voice demanding my submission.
“Don’t move. You’ll tear the wound,” Damon said, his hand settling on my shoulder to keep me in place. His touch was clinical now, assessing damage rather than seeking pleasure.
“You missed your coronation,” I managed, my throat raw from screaming. The weight of it hit me as I spoke. The most important night of his life, thrown away for an omega in heat.
His lips twitched in what might have been amusement. “It can wait another night.” The casual dismissal of everything he’d worked for stunned me into silence. Power, politics, the careful dance of succession that had dominated territory gossip for months, all abandoned because biology demanded it.
What have we done in our madness? The thought echoed as I stared at him, this stranger who was now my mate. In the harsh light of morning, our claiming felt impossible. Unreal.
Without warning, Damon rolled above me, weight pressing me into the expensive mattress. His morning arousal pressed insistently against my thigh, and I realized with a mix of shock and something else that he intended to have me again. Here, now, with the council waiting and the territory wondering where their new king had vanished to.
“We can’t,” I protested even as he nuzzled the claiming bite, sending sparks of pain and pleasure through my system. “They’re expecting you.”
