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I bite him again.

Only this time, I break the skin. Caspian screams, his cock pulsing between us, hot cum coating us both. His blood lands on my tongue and my own release explodes out of me, pulse after pulse filling him. I suck on his neck harder, the metallic yet sweet liquid coating my mouth and dripping down my throat. My heart thunders like it’s trying to escape, and one unexpected word hits me like a freight train.

Mate.

There is no time to contemplate it before I am overwhelmed with a force so strong I have no chance of holding it back. The control I had snaps like a fraying thread and I can’t move fast enough, my body already in motion into a partial shift. The head of my cock swells, my knot growing rapidly, pressing against Caspian’s walls. My canines drop and the claws at the ends of my fingers erupt, pinching his skin where I’m still gripping him tightly.

Caspian’s eyes widen. The desire I saw in them earlier melting away, replaced with fear and a million questions. The air around us stills, pressing in like fragile glass that I am certain is about to shatter.

“Sterling?”

I open my mouth to speak, but as I do so he tries to wriggle away, which only makes the pressure on my knot increase and I am powerless to the shudder that runs through me as I release into him again. He groans as the swollen tip of my cock hits him deep inside. Caspian closes his eyes, his ass tightening around my cock and heat pooling between us as he comes for the second time.

Eyes wide, he frantically pushes at my shoulders, trying to pull away, and though I can move back enough to lift partly off him, I cannot pull out until my knot goes down. Not without hurting him. Clamping my hands down firmly on his hips, I pin him to the mattress.

“Stop moving.”

The look on his face twists something cold and sharp in my chest and I close my eyes and will my knot to go down, so that I don’t have to open my eyes and see the betrayal on my mate’s face for a second longer.

TWENTY-FIVE

CASPIAN

Ihave to be dreaming. Sex with Sterling must have been so good that I fell asleep and landed in some strange, fucked-up fantasy where the beast I’ve been seeing when I close my eyes since the accident is here in my room. His cock buried deep, wringing pleasure from my body.

Fuck.

It’s unlike anything I’ve experienced before, his monster cock pressing against my prostate, lighting up my nerve endings every time I try to pull away.

But as I take stock of the pain where his claws are digging into my flesh, the cooling sweat on my skin, and the throb of my hole stretching around him, I know with absolute certainty that I am wide awake. Green eyes bright with a supernatural glow stare back at me and I’m hit with a sudden, stomach sinking realisation that this man I have fallen hopelessly in love with is not a man, after all.

“Sterling, what is happening?”

He purses his lips, tension bunching in his naked shoulders. His chest rises and falls in rapid succession, luminous green scales glowing between the coarse grey hair on his torso.

“I’m sorry, my sweet Caspian.” His voice is raspy, deeper than I remember, and when he cards a hand through the ruffled bun on his head, I note the same green scales on the back of his hand. “I never wanted to lie to you.”

Panic flares. “I don’t understand.”

Mate, a voice that sounds very much like my own echoes in my mind, doing nothing but confusing me more, and my heart beats, the thud feeling like it comes from two different places in my chest. Sterling rubs his sternum, his shining green eyes dipping to where my heart is beating against my ribcage.

“You feel it too, don’t you?”

I don’t answer, because even though I feel something, I don’t understand it and I’m not about to admit it to him either.

“Can you get off me, please?” I ask, my voice firm but quiet. I don’t dare move before he does. My cock is beyond sensitive and my prostate couldn’t handle more stimulation right now. I also no longer want this…whatever he is, to make me come again.

“Soon,” he says. He holds one hand centimetres away from my cheek, but doesn’t touch me. I watch out of the corner of my eye as he flexes his hand, folding his claws into his palm. “I just need my knot to go down. I never want to hurt you, Caspian.”

His what?

“Please Sterling, please help me understand.” My voice breaks and I hate that my eyes sting, tears building at the edges.

I squeeze them shut, green orbs haunting me in the darkness as an answer comes to me. An answer I don’t want to believe, but can no longer deny.

Opening them again, I glare at Sterling. He’s watching me intently, his hands hovering at the side of my chest like he wants to touch me but is too afraid to give into his desire.

“It’s you,” I state flatly. “You saved me that day.”