Page 15 of Branded By Shadow
This was impossible. A temporary bond should have been stable. Not as strong as a true claiming, but still enough to the relief her body craved. It should have bought her time to recover before anything else happened. I’d never heard of the process failing, least of all this catastrophically fast.
Cora collapsed back, her body seizing in a violent, full-body convulsion. Her muscles locked, her back arching at animpossible angle. When she screamed, the sheer extent of her agony seemed to reach into my chest and claw me open.
This couldn’t be just because of her suppressants. Or… could it? Her unique, powerful formula was plant-based. Hades only knew how it must have interacted with her Demeter blood.
Maybe even now, her work was trying to fight off the bond she’d never wanted. But it was hurting her more than ever before. Her body had declared war on the bond and was trying to tear it out by the root. It was clawing Cora’s sanity out, in the process.
I reached for her, my own instincts screaming to soothe, to contain, to claim. I should have known better than to think it’d work.
She’d been leery of me even before this outburst. But she’d allowed me to get close because she’d needed it. This time, I didn’t even get the chance to touch her. A jungle erupted from the bed itself, the silk sheets shredding as thick vines punched through the mattress.
Driven by the sheer force of her distress, the plants lashed out, a writhing, mindless defense. A tendril thick as my wrist whipped through the air, its thorns tearing a deep gash across my forearm. Her power, untethered and insane with pain, was actively trying to protect her by keeping me away.
Within seconds, I couldn’t see the walls anymore. Green consumed everything, transforming the sterile suite into something feral and suffocating.
I’d known that she was immensely gifted, had seen her abilities before. But never in my wildest dreams had I thought it would manifest like this. Was this what my father had meant when he’d given me his cryptic warning? Maybe, maybe not. In the end, it didn’t matter. Nothing, not even Cora’s Olympian bloodline, would stand between us.
Darkness swelled from underneath my skin. The shadows ripped the vines that coiled around my arms, fending off her attack. All the while, I kept my gaze locked on Cora. Her movements were no longer human, just the desperate, self-destructive thrashing of an animal caught in a steel trap. Her body moved without direction, arching and twisting against anything that might provide friction. She was lost in this new wave of heat, and I was the only one who could pull her out.
Finally tearing the last of the plants away, I lunged onto the bed and pinned her down. Her skin was impossibly hot, slick with a feverish sweat.
“Cora, be still!” I shouted, pouring every ounce of my Alpha authority into the words.
The command hit her and shattered, useless against the tidal wave of her agony. She fought me with a surge of primal strength that shouldn’t have been possible. In the wreckage of her mind, there was no room for submission. There was only pain.
It was in that moment of complete failure, as I wrestled to hold her while she broke against me, that a single, broken word slipped through the keening.
“Need...”
It was the last, desperate cry of her biology, the core instinct that remained when everything else had been burned away. It was a confirmation of everything I’d taunted her with. It brought me no satisfaction.
The temporary bond had become a cruel joke, turning what should have been mercy into torture. A single, overriding instinct roared through me, drowning out everything else:I have to keep her safe.
There was no more time for patience. Her heat’s fire had obliterated everything except a simple truth.
I was her Alpha, and Cora my Omega. That was the only thing that could help her now.
7
The Fever
Cora
Heat ate through my veins like acid, dissolving everything I’d ever been. My skin burned. My bones burned. My thoughts had been incinerated, leaving nothing behind but raw animal instinct.
“Cora, don’t be afraid.” Damon’s voice cut through the haze. “Focus on me.”
I tried to obey, but my vision swam, refusing to focus. Everything blurred together, shapes and colors bleeding into meaningless chaos. “Can’t… Can’t think.”
My body arched and twisted on its own, a puppet pulled by strings of raw biological command. It pressed against the sheets,against him, against anything that might offer relief from the inferno consuming me.
When Damon’s fingers brushed my cheek, pleasure-pain exploded through my nervous system. I screamed, the sound torn from somewhere primitive and desperate.
“I’ve got you,” he said, his voice unfaltering. “Let it out.”
I found the silk of his shirt, ripping the fabric in my compulsion to reach skin. I clawed at whatever I could reach. Cloth, flesh, it didn’t matter. I needed contact. Needed him closer. Needed everything.
“Hurts,” I whimpered against his chest. “Everything hurts.”
