Page 104 of Renegade Kingdom
I drove into her hard, deep, and felt her shatter around me. Her orgasm hit through the bond like a wave, flooding me with her pleasure, and it pushed me to the edge. I buried my face in the curve of her neck, found the skin where shoulder met throat, and bit down.
She screamed. Her body clenched around me and a second orgasm crashed through her before the first had finished. The taste of her blood on my tongue was the thing that broke me completely. I came with her name in my mouth and her blood on my lips. The bond between us blazed so bright that the entire chamber turned white.
Then the court marks on her body started to move. Quickly followed by something on me.
I felt it before I saw it. A burning that wasn’t pain, spreading across my skin from the place where my mouth met her neck. When I lifted my head, gasping, shaking, still buried inside her, I watched the shadow magic and Alyssa’s light trace new patterns across both our bodies. The marks that had been on Alyssa’s skin, the ones from her other bonds, were expanding. Growing. Weaving new lines that connected to a fresh mark on her neck where my teeth had broken skin. The bite was already healing, sealing itself into something permanent. A dark crescent threaded with light, and from it, lines of shadow and light spiralled outward, reaching down her shoulder, across her collarbone, linking with the marks that were already there.
On my own skin, marks were appearing for the first time. Dark as ink, shot through with veins of white light, spreading from mychest where the bond burned brightest, down my arms, across my ribs. I watched them emerge with a wonder that stole my breath. I’d never been marked by anything except scars. These weren’t scars. These were promises. Written on skin in magic older than memory.
“Damon,” Alyssa whispered. She was watching the marks move across her own body, her fingers tracing the new lines with something like awe. “Look.”
Where the marks on her skin met the marks on mine, where our bodies were still pressed together, the patterns connected. Seamless. Like they’d always been meant to join. Light and shadow, woven into a single design that covered us both and bound us to each other and to the court that had chosen us.
The bond was complete.
I could feel it. Not a thread anymore. A river. Wide and deep and rushing with everything we were and everything we would become. Her emotions flowed through me and mine through her, and for the first time in my life I understood what the others had. What Dean felt when he looked at her. What Tank and Maddox and Ryder carried in their chests every moment of every day. This was what it meant to be bonded. To be mated. To belong to someone so completely that the line between self and other became a suggestion rather than a boundary.
I pressed my forehead against hers. We were both trembling. Both breathing hard. The chamber around us had gone quiet, the pulsing of the walls settling into something steady and content, as if the court itself had been waiting for this and was now, finally, satisfied.
“Hi,” Alyssa said. Her voice was wrecked and her eyes were shining but she was smiling.
“Hi,” I said back.
She laughed. A small, hiccupping thing that was half a sob, so I kissed her. I could kiss her whenever I wanted. I could touch herand hold her and the only voice in my head was the wolf’s quiet rumble of satisfaction.
I rolled onto my side and pulled her with me, keeping her close, unwilling to break contact. Her back pressed against my chest and I wrapped myself around her. The shadow magic settled over us both like a blanket, warm despite its darkness, and Alyssa hummed softly against me.
“I can feel the wolf,” she murmured. “Through the bond. He’s happy.”
“He’s smug,” I corrected. “There’s a difference.”
She laughed again, and the sound of it moved through the bond like sunlight through water.
I pressed my lips to the fresh mark on her neck. My mark. The thought sent something fierce through me that the wolf echoed with a low, possessive growl.
“We still need to figure out the shadow magic,” Alyssa said after a while. Her fingers were tracing the new marks on my arm, following the dark lines where they wound around muscle and bone. “What it can do. How to control it.”
“I know.”
“And the wolf. The full moon is close, you won’t have much time to get used to each other before you’re forced into the first shift.”
“I know.”
“And we need to deal with Arik before he...”
“Alyssa.”
She stopped. Tilted her head back to look at me.
“I know all of that,” I said. “And I know none of it can wait forever. But right now, in this exact moment, I’m lying in bed with the woman I love for the first time in my life and the only voice in my head is telling me to hold on tighter.” I pulled her closer to prove the point. “Give me tonight. We can save the world tomorrow.”
She was quiet for a moment. Then she turned in my arms, pressed her face against my chest, and breathed me in.
“Tomorrow,” she agreed.
The court dimmed around us, the veins in the walls fading to a soft glow, as if someone had drawn curtains over the light. The marks on our skin pulsed gently in the dark. Shadow and light. His and hers. Bound together in a pattern that would never come apart.
I held her, and the wolf settled in my chest. The silence in my head was the most precious thing I’d ever owned.
