(Nyx POV)
The clearing smelled of pine, smoke, and blood.
My pulse hadn't slowed from the run. Every heartbeat slammed against my ribs like a warning. My arm throbbed where the blade had grazed me, and my wolf pressed at the edges of my skin—restless, hungry, unrepentant.
You traitorous bitch, I hissed at her. Shut up!
She didn't retreat. She surged.
Don't you speak to me that way, coward, Kelly purred. Strip the fear. This is our mate. Claim him—or let me do it.
"I'm not some heat-struck—" I bit off the word, jaw tightening.
She laughed, rolling in my skull like a pup in snow. You've killed for less. Don't pretend you don't want to sink your teeth into him.
"Shut. Up."
Dorian cocked his head, nostrils flaring like he could scent the argument raging under my skin. "Talking to yourself?"
"Not exactly."
Tell him the truth, Kelly urged. Tell him we're ready.
We are not—
We are, she growled, suddenly serious. Two hundred years he hunted. Two hundred we hid. There's no prophecy left—only this. Him. Us. Now.
He took a single step closer, heat radiating from his body like a second sun. "You're bleeding," he said quietly. "And shaking."
"I'm fine."
Liar, Kelly hissed, delighted. You're on fire.
He studied me, gaze sharp and predatory. His voice dropped low enough to vibrate through my bones. "I can hear your wolf."
My eyes snapped open. "You—what?"
"I can feel her," he said, closing the distance until his shadow swallowed mine. "She wants me." His thumb dragged through the blood on my arm; his gaze never left my face. "So do you."
My knees threatened to give. Kelly rumbled inside me—Claim. Mate. Mark. Now.
I lifted the Glock between us, desperate. "Stay back."
His smile turned wolfish, dangerous. "You won't shoot me."
No, Kelly sang. We'll bite him.
He closed the final inch, his hand covering the gun, gentling it down. His other hand framed my jaw, tilting my face up until my pulse brushed his thumb.
"Stop fighting what's ours," he growled. "Or I'll stop asking."
My wolf went quiet—not submissive, not afraid. Coiled. Ready.
"Say it," he whispered, so close his breath warmed my lips. "Say you feel it."
"I don't owe you—" The denial dissolved. The bond was a tide dragging me under, ancient as moonlight, inevitable as breath.
His forehead pressed against mine. "Choose me, Nyx. I've waited for you for so long."
The words cracked something open in me.
Behind my eyes, memory flashed—the night of fire. The scent of blood and ash. My father's voice echoing down the cellar stairs:
Run, little shadow. Live for both of us.
He'd spared me that night, defying the decree that twins born under the Blood Moon could not survive. One to rule, one to burn. He had chosen love over law—and paid with his life. That mercy had branded me cursed, a half-breed without a pack, a ghost among wolves.
Now here stood the king the prophecy said would find me, hunt me, bind me in blood.
And I was staring at him like a starving thing.
Kelly's voice softened, reverent. He died to buy your choice. Don't waste it. Choose us.
The gun slipped from my fingers. It hit the forest floor with a dull thud that sounded like surrender.
"No more running," I whispered. "But I'm afraid."
His thumb brushed my cheek. "I've got you, little wolf."
Heat rolled off him, seeping under my skin, pooling low in my stomach. His eyes flickered gold, his wolf rising like a tide behind them. "Trust me. Trust us."
Kelly screamed in joy. Yes! Yes! Yes!
Something inside me broke—no, bloomed. His relief hit like a heatwave. My consent turned the forest electric.
He kissed me like a vow, not a theft—slow at first, a brush of promise, then deeper when I met him halfway. Fingers tangled over my hair; his mouth coaxed and demanded in the same breath. The world narrowed to heat and breath and the thunder of two hearts tripping over the same beat.The moment his teeth sank in, the world cracked open.
Heat flooded my veins—pine and smoke and something darker, stormfire and iron. His scent poured through me, threading into every nerve, burning his name into my blood. I could taste him in the air, feel him under my skin, an ache that hummed like a live wire. The mark throbbed—not just pain, but possession. My wolf howled in rapture. His essence wasn't on me—it was in me, anchoring, claiming, warning the world whose shadow I now carried.
His hand slid to my waist, the other steady against the bark behind my head. Every motion burned. Every inhale pulled his scent—smoke, pine, rain—deeper into me until I thought I'd drown in it.
Kelly went still in my mind, no longer mocking, only murmuring mine with something close to awe.
The bond sang, a hum beneath my skin, a spark gathering at the mark that hadn't yet been made. I could feel the ancient pull—the instinct that whispered, now, bite, claim.
And then the wind shifted.
Metal on air. The sharp, acrid scent of silver. Too many heartbeats moving in rhythm.
Dorian froze. My eyes snapped open.
"Rogues?" I asked, breath uneven.
"Or zealots," he said, already scanning the trees. "Either way armed."
Kelly's snarl rippled through me. I'm pissed. Good, I'm kicking some ass. I'm hungry.
The first arrow hissed through the canopy. He caught it one-handed and snapped the shaft clean. Another whistled past my shoulder. I spun and fired, dropping the archer before his second shot loosed.
Then chaos.
Figures burst from the treeline—dark shapes, faces painted with ash, eyes burning red. Their blades glimmered with liquid silver. I moved on instinct, blades out, cutting through the first two that lunged. Blood spattered my face.
"Stay close!" Dorian barked.
"I don't take orders," I shot back, even as I pivoted into his shadow, back to back.
Kelly howled with exhilaration. Finally! Violence and foreplay—our favorite combination!
"How did you get so violent?" I chided my wolf.Kelly snorted. "I've been through some things."
I sliced through another zealot's throat, rolled under a swing, came up firing. Dorian moved like thunder beside me—fists, claws, motion too fluid for any mortal thing. His strikes were clean, efficient, deadly. Each kill thickened the air with the metallic tang of blood
But there were too many.
He shifted—not fully, just enough. His eyes went gold-white. His voice deepened, layered, the beast bleeding through. "They followed your scent.
"Mate," Dorian called, voice edged with fury. "They want the bond before we finish it! That want you Nyx."
"They'll have to pry it from my corpse."
"Not tonight," he growled.
Something whistled—too fast to dodge. I turned, saw the silver flash, braced—
Dorian moved. The arrow sank deep into his shoulder instead.
He didn't fall. Didn't even flinch. He ripped it free, tossed it aside, blood steaming in the cold. "Poisoned," he muttered. "Bastards."
I caught him by the arm. "You can't—"
He turned his head, eyes blazing. "I can."
Our marks pulsed together—mine unsealed, his half-formed—glowing faintly through the chaos. The connection flared, heat and pain, a pulse of light that sent the nearest zealots reeling.
The forest shook. For a heartbeat, every creature went still.
Then came the voice. Low. Resonant. Not Dorian's, not mine—something older, coiling through the air like smoke:
"The Bloodline wakes."
The rogues fled at once. Their retreat scattered leaves and arrows alike. The clearing went silent but for the sound of our breathing.
Dorian dropped to one knee, gripping his shoulder. His blood glowed faintly silver under the moonlight.
I knelt beside him. "You took that for me."
"You're mine to protect," he said through clenched teeth. "Even before you accept it."
I looked down at the faint shimmer between our skin—the beginning of a mark that hadn't been completed. "You saved me once already," I whispered. "In another lifetime."
His gaze found mine, fierce and tender all at once. "Then finish what fate started."
I almost said yes. I almost let the bond finish what it had begun. But movement in the dark stopped me—a glint of armor, a whisper of prayer, the zealots regrouping beyond the ridge.
Dorian's voice roughened. "Later, little shadow."
I nodded. "Later."
He rose to his feet despite the wound, blood streaking his arm, and extended his hand. I took it.
Together, we stepped over the bodies and back into the trees. Behind us, the clearing still hummed with the echo of something ancient—the half-born bond of a king and the assassin fated to end him.
And above it all, the moon turned red.
The mark between us pulsed once more—unfinished, waiting.