This chapter includes material that may be triggering for some readers.
Summary of triggers: Chapter Forty-Two Part II features sexual coercion and assault.
If you would like to skip Part II, please click below.
The power in it overwhelmed her, vast as a tide, and for a moment she thought she would drown.
Her knees buckled fully this time. He caught her and lifted her and for an instant she left the world only to return with her back to the mattress.
He whispered her name once, reverent, his lips against her neck, his hands exploring. Her cloak was gone – when had she lost it? – his fingers climbed the soft wool of her thighs and she shuddered with the richness of the contact, her Heat commanding, bringing in all the animal movement of him.
She wanted to rise, to see his face, but when she tried to sit up he brought his arm across her chest, and held her back against the pillows.
“Morgan –”
“Yes,” he said, and kissed her before she could say more. The taste of their mingled blood filled her mouth, then there was the taste of him, like biting on the end of a quill or a blade of grass. Her hands rose to feel the soft feathers along his arms, and his kiss moved down to her throat, nibbling gently, then her collarbone, the fabric of her dress.
He stripped from his clothes to reveal himself, his skin snowy egret white, the black feathers with their blue undershine. He was narrow and angular and his arms were corded with muscle and she might have thought him delicate but for the ease with which he’d carried her to the bed.
He felt around her bodice in search of a clasp, but it was on the back –
He flipped her and she yelped with surprise. He tore at the clasp – You’ll break it, she thought, saddened, remembering Sena gently dressing her, and suddenly Sena was all she wanted, the soft Kelthi girl with her wooly legs and ringing laugh.
But the Heat would have Morgan.
So when the clasp came free and his hands poured across her scales and skin, she arched her back, and when he put his hand to her neck to hold her down and bite her ear, she moaned. He wanted her; she wanted to be wanted; his blood was her blood.
He tugged her tail aside – Mallow had been so gentle in contrast, how could she forget? – and found her ready. Morgan did not wait for her confirmation. In one steady thrust he entered her.
It was not the joy that had been hers when Mallow had found her at last; nor was there a seeking in the Heat the way it had sought to bond with Mallow. Another thing came forward instead, something from the ritual of blood. It wasn’t guided by a great outside force, a universe of making in the way of the bond; this force belonged to Morgan.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
It moved through her body from gut to heart, shuddering through her limbs.
Her body moved of Morgan’s accord.
Morgan tested his control. His thought moved her hand. His command drew her back to him as he continued to fill her.
“Yes,” he cooed. “Like that, pet.”
Through him she arched her hips and curved her spine.
She relaxed into his control with great relief. She didn’t have to feel conflicted about this; he had her, and would do as he wished.
He brought his hands to her hips, pulling her up against him, but this was difficult for her Kelthi legs and so he rolled her to her back once more. He brought his hands beneath her and lifted her to him and she admired the feathers that covered his chest and shoulders like a shimmering black gorget. Her Heat found every bit of this sight beautiful, arching hungrily toward him. What Tuning they shared – and there was achingly little of it – brought him to the Heat’s hunger. He grinned down at her and brought her closer, closer. He bent over her, both of her legs over his hips, and buried himself deep, deep enough for pain. But there was no part of her Heat that wouldn’t take it like this, that wouldn’t take it any way he would give it.
Time folded strangely, the mixture of wanting and pain building in her Heat, and this, too, was so unlike what she’d known with Mallow, motivated by something red and hungry and powerful.
The warmth of him became weight. The shared pulse of the Veinwright bond folded inward, a tether pulling taut as Morgan wound her toward him. Something in her core resisted, a fluttering panic, and she nearly did pull away then, as if only now realizing what exactly this bonding was, what it would mean for Veinwright seed to take root inside her, how desperately she wished they’d spoken on this before now.
She struggled but only weakly. He felt it in her body and in the Tuning. He tangled his hand in her antlers, and held her down. With the force of his blood he coaxed her closer and closer to the white pleasure at her middle, drawing all her focus down to that center of gravity between them, turning her away from the panic.
A song began in her, then shifted key, aligning with his will. The pattern of it sank deeper, carving a mark along her spine, invisible and indelible.
It was the Kelthi bond.
She was suddenly grieved that he had found this part of her, realizing she’d been hiding it subconsciously, that it was something she hadn’t wished to share. But his blood had seen it from the air and dropped to snatch it up like an owl in the night. She wished he would take anything but this.
But once the Kelthi bond was in the air, suspended in his claws, it was perfect. She was no longer alone, no longer burdened by choice. Every thought dissolved into a single, unbroken thread of belonging.
“Mine,” he said, gasping above her.
She was his. She was.
The bond tangled them together, Morgan’s will the cord, tether tied twice by his hands alone.
Vaguely, she remembered Darrin, binding her legs, lowering her to the earth with horrible gentleness.
Freeze.
When the Heat crested and broke, his pulse beat through her own, and he emptied himself. The Heat wanted it. The Heat held fast.
Lain breathed, and breathed, and breathed.
It was only when he descended from his reverie that she found herself in command of her own body once more. Even so she couldn’t bring herself to move.