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I rise slowly, keeping my movements non-threatening even as my feral urges thrash against the boundaries of my body. "So you've decided to give up?"

"I've decided to be realistic." She wraps her arms around herself, a gesture that looks more like armor than comfort. "Lachlan's theory about a complete surrender? It requires the Vessel to stop fighting and submit wholly to the magic in order to reforge the seal."

The implication sends a sickening jolt straight down into my stomach. "Submit wholly."

"The Vessel's life force pays the ultimate toll." Her voice goes flat, emotionless. "It’s permanent and final. But it works—it's the only theory that makes sense of the fragments I've found."

"No." The word slices through the room with unexpected sharpness. "No damn way."

"Darius—"

Stepping closer, I crowd her until she has to crane her neck back to hold my gaze. "You don't get to make that choice alone."

"It's not your choice to make."

"Like hell it isn't." My hands frame her face, fingers brushing across her cheekbones. "You think I'm going to stand here and let you plan your own execution? After everything we've been through?"

Her stoic facade finally gives way. Tears spill down her cheeks, and her breath comes in short, desperate gasps. "I don't want to die. God, Darius, I don't want to leave you. But if it's the only way to stop this thing⁠—"

"We'll find another way."

"There is no other way!" Her outburst releases enough magical force to rattle the windows. "I've read every journal, every account, every desperate theory my family documented for three centuries. This is it. This is the answer they were all too afraid to try."

I cradle her against my chest and hold her while she breaks apart in my arms. Her tears soak through my shirt while latent energy crackles under her skin.

"Then we change the game. We find a way to make it work without losing you."

"How?"

"I don't know yet," I admit, reinforcing my embrace. "But I refuse to let you face this alone."

Her tears warm against my skin, fueling an unshakable resolve to secure her safety. I cup her face, trapping her with my gaze. "We stand together in this, Rene. I’m keeping you safe."

She blinks rapidly, swallowing hard against the sudden tightness in her throat. "Then give me a reason to stay."

The plea sparks an undeniable rush through me. I meet her lips, a consuming fire fueling the kiss, my urgency matching her own. Salt and desperation flood my senses as she arches against me. Her fingers twist in my shirt, reeling me closer until we stumble backward. My knees hit the floorboards, and she follows me down, intent on keeping her body flush against mine, her legs wrapping around my hips.

Kellan’s in the next room. The thought slices through the haze. Letting him into this moment to expose a connection so true and gut-wrenchingly vulnerable is out of the question. Lifting her in one motion, her thighs lock around my waist as we head toward one of the makeshift bedrooms. She nips my lower lip in a silent challenge before my boot kicks the door shut.

She backs up until the mattress hits the back of her knees, moonlight catching the metallic hue in her eyes. "Darius⁠—"

"Quiet." I silence her with another kiss, my hands already working the buttons of her jeans as we tumble together onto the bed. Her scent heightens—wild jasmine and ozone, the electric tang of power and her.

I trap her body against the sheets, peeling denim down her legs, the sheer urgency of the bond driving us both. Her gasp echoes in the quiet bedroom when my mouth finds the inside of her thigh, and refusing to simply take, her palms drive urgently against my chest. Her own hunger matches the wolf's as she pivots her body on the mattress. Shifting up over me, she reverses direction, her deliberate intent guiding her to hover on her hands and knees, facing the foot of the bed. Her dark hair spills across my thighs, and for one suspended moment I can only stare—this fierce, impossible woman arranging herself over me as if she owns every inch of this area.

The view wrecks whatever control I have left. In the moonlight, the full, pale curves of her hips and ass are framed perfectly right above my face. She lowers herself slightly, the heavy, slick heat of her core flush against my lips, filling my vision and drowning out reality itself. Her scent is intoxicating here—musky and damp, turning sharp with moonlike heat.

I place an open-mouthed kiss directly into her and release a vibrating hum against her clit that asks you like that? without needing a single word.

The vibration tremors right through her, and she breaks, her mouth closing over me to swallow the high, breathless moan that tears from her throat. Hearing her arousal echo around my dick sends a stream of heat straight to my gut.

The world narrows to a fever dream of shared sensation. I cup the heavy undersides of her ass, sliding her down securely against my face and mapping her responses like territory—the hitch when I graze teeth over sensitive skin, how her hips arch and roll helplessly against my mouth the moment I slow down. Above me, her lips trail fire, her mouth plunging me into a chasm of answering, desperate heat. Fisting my hands into her hair holds her fast to me as the sheer intensity sweeps through. It is a brilliant, consuming chaos, our scents and heat blurring together under the slick, demanding suction of her tongue on my cock and the fierce, unyielding momentum of my own.

Her body locks tight above me, a sudden arch of muscle and magic that steals the air from her lungs. I feel the tremor build through her thighs first—then the hot, slick gush floods my mouth and chin. It tastes salty-sweet, an electric tang of cosmic power dominating the flavor. Drinking her down like a man starved, my animalistic instincts roar approval at the taste of her release.

"Good girl," I murmur against her skin, the vibration making her shudder violently. Her fingers fist into the sheets, holding me against her as aftershocks ripple through her. "You’re perfect."

But the wolf’s hunger expands—advancing with a fiercer, more vibrant energy. She is mine right now.