Page 89 of Blood Marked

Kael sheathed himself inside her in one slow, reverent push. Her back arched off the furs, a gasp catching in her throat as her nails scored his shoulders. Her heat clenched around him, slick and urgent, and he groaned against the sweat-damp curve of her neck. “Look at me,” he rasped, thumb brushing the pulse fluttering beneath her jaw. “Look at me when I’m inside you.”

Her eyes opened—dark as the space between stars, pupils blown wide. “You feel…” Her breath hitched as he withdrew almost completely, then thrust deeper, angling his hips to press where she trembled. “Gods, Kael?—"

“Say it again.” He nipped her earlobe, relishing her shudder. “My name. Like it’s the only word you know.”

She laughed, breathless, hips rolling to meet his next thrust. “Arrogant bastard.”

“Yours,” he corrected, dragging his mouth down her throat. Her hands fisted in his hair, urging him lower. He obliged, tongue swirling over a peaked nipple before sucking hard enough to make her cry out. Her thighs tightened around his hips, heels digging into the small of his back as he set a rhythm that had the bed’s ancient wood creaking. Every slide of his cock into her molten core drew ragged sounds from them both—half-formed words, bitten-off curses, the raw music of skin meeting skin.

When his teeth grazed her shoulder, she went rigid beneath him. “Do it,” she panted, nails biting crescents into his biceps. “Now.”

He sank his canines into the tender junction of her neck, the taste of her blood blooming sharp and metallic on his tongue.Her climax tore through her like a storm, back bowing as she shattered with a sob. He drank the salt of her skin, the bond between them flaring white-hot as ancient magic stitched their souls tighter than flesh.

“Mine,” she gasped when he finally lifted his head, thumb smearing blood across her kiss-swollen lips. “You’remine.”

He captured her mouth, letting her taste herself on him. “Always.” His thrusts turned erratic, desperate, her inner walls milking him as her aftershocks dragged him over the edge. He spilled into her with a groan that shook his entire frame, forehead pressed to hers as the world narrowed to the hitch of her breath, the flutter of her lashes against his cheek.

They lay tangled long after, her leg hooked over his hip to keep him buried inside her. Moonlight gilded the sweat-sheened planes of her body as she traced the scar bisecting his ribs. “You’re staring,” she murmured, a smirk playing at her mouth.

“You’re naked.” He nipped her thumb when it brushed his lower lip. “And breathtaking.”

She rolled her eyes, but the blush staining her cheeks betrayed her. “Poetic for a man who growled ‘harder’ three times.”

He flipped her onto her back in one fluid motion, grinning at her yelp. “Youlikedthe growling.”

Her laughter faded as he kissed his way down her stomach. “Kael?—"

“Hmm?” He glanced up, lips hovering over the thatch of dark curls. “Problem, wife?”

Her throat bobbed. “Just… don’t stop.”

He didn’t.

Later, with her marked and sleeping beside him, her scent wrapped in his every breath, Kael stared at the moons above and whispered into the dark:

“She chose me.”

And this time, he chose himself too.

FORTY

SELENE

The courtyard had never felt this alive.

Not in all the weeks—months—she’d lived within House Fenrir’s walls. Not even during the war briefings or rites or coronations. No, this was something different.

This waspeace.

Earned. Hard-won. Real.

And Selene Morwen stood at the heart of it all, the Veil curling warmly at her back, Kael’s hand wrapped in hers, and a breeze tugging her crimson cloak gently behind her.

He’d made her one of them.

She’d made herself something more.

The scars they bore weren’t visible. Not all of them. But as the four shifter heirs stepped through the gates—each one shadowed by history, prophecy, or power—Selene realized something that made her heart pound with something dangerously close to hope.

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