POV: Luci / Easton
"You are trembling."
The words were not a question but an observation, and Easton delivered them in a voice that was softer than Luci had expected, softer than the golden glow still fading from his eyes and the possessive heat still radiating from his skin and the desperate urgency that had driven them up the maintenance stairs and onto the roof of the arena where the night air was cold enough to make her teeth chatter but not cold enough to cool the fire burning in her blood. He had pressed her against the brick of the chimney stack with a gentleness that belied his strength, and now he was looking at her as if she were something precious and breakable and entirely his, and the weight of that gaze was heavier than the hands he had braced on either side of her head.
"I am terrified," she admitted, and her voice cracked on the last syllable because she was done pretending and done hiding and done trying to be brave in the face of something she did not understand. "You are telling me that you are a king. That you are three hundred years old. That your enemies slaughtered your entire family and that they will come for me now because of what I am to you. And you expect me to stand here and pretend that I am not shaking?"
"I expect you to stand here and shake," he said, and his lips curved into a smile that was sad and tender and fierce all at once, a contradiction that made her heart ache because she could see the boy beneath the king and the loneliness beneath the legend and the fear beneath the fangs. "I expect you to be afraid. I would be worried if you were not. But I also expect you to trust me when I tell you that I will die before I let anyone hurt you. That is not a promise made by a boy who wants to impress you. That is a vow sworn by a king who has nothing left to lose except you."
"That is a lot of pressure to put on a girl who was just trying to return a forgotten phone," she said, and the joke was weak and watery and barely a joke at all, but it made him laugh, a low and rusty sound that seemed to surprise him as much as it surprised her, and the tension between them shifted into something softer, something more dangerous because it felt like intimacy rather than obsession.
"Luci," he said, and her name in his mouth was a caress and a claim and a warning all at once, "I need you to understand what is about to happen. The bond is not finished. It will not be finished until I mark you. And once I mark you, every wolf in a hundred miles will know that you are mine. The Crimson Moon will know. Silas will know. And they will come for you because you are the only thing in this world that can destroy me."
"Then why do it?" she asked, and her hands came up to rest against his chest where his heart was hammering with the same frantic rhythm as her own. "If marking me puts us both in danger, why not wait? Why not find another way?"
"Because there is no other way," he said, and he leaned into her touch as if her palms were the only thing keeping him upright, as if the weight of his crown and his grief and his centuries of solitude had finally become too heavy to bear alone. "Because the bond is killing me slowly, and the longer I wait, the weaker I become. And if I am weak when Silas comes, I cannot protect you. I cannot protect anyone. The mark is not just a claim, Luci. It is a transfer of power. It will make me stronger. It will make you stronger. And it will bind us together so that neither of us ever has to face the darkness alone again."
"You are asking me to give up my life," she said, and her voice was steadier now because she had spent her whole life being afraid of the wrong things and she was done with that too. "My human life. My family. My future. You are asking me to become something I do not understand in a world I did not know existed, all because of a bond I did not choose."
"I am asking you to choose it now," he said, and his forehead dropped to rest against hers so that his breath mingled with her breath and his heartbeat echoed her heartbeat and the world shrank down to the small space between them where everything true and terrifying lived. "I am asking you to look at me, really look at me, and tell me that you feel nothing. Tell me that your blood does not sing when I am near. Tell me that your soul does not recognize mine. Tell me that, and I will walk away. I will find another way. I will let you go back to your human life and pretend that none of this ever happened. But you have to mean it, Luci. You have to mean every word."
She looked at him, at the golden eyes that were more blue now than gold, at the face that was more vulnerable than fierce, at the man who had been waiting for her for three hundred years without even knowing her name, and she realized that the fear was still there, thrumming beneath her skin like a second heartbeat, but it was no longer the loudest thing in the room. The loudest thing was the truth, and the truth was that she did not want him to walk away. The truth was that she had been watching him for months, not because he was beautiful or talented or famous, but because something in her had recognized something in him, and she had been waiting for this moment without knowing she was waiting.
"Do it," she said, and the words were barely a whisper but they carried the weight of everything she was giving up and everything she was gaining and everything she was choosing to become. "Mark me. Claim me. Make me yours. But you have to promise me one thing."
"Anything," he said, and the word was a growl and a prayer and a vow.
"Do not let me become someone I do not recognize," she said, and the tears that had been building behind her eyes finally spilled over because this was the fear she had not been able to name, the fear that the bond would erase her, that the wolf would consume the woman, that she would wake up one day and not remember who she had been before she met him. "Promise me that I will still be Luci. Even after. Even when the war comes. Even when everything falls apart. Promise me that I will still be me."
"I promise," he said, and he kissed her then, a hard and desperate and tender kiss that tasted of salt and sorrow and the fierce hope of two people who had found each other in the dark, and when he pulled back, his eyes were blazing with a gold so bright that she had to squint to look at him. "You will always be you, Luci. You will just be more. You will be everything you were always meant to become."
He lowered his mouth to her neck, and she felt the sharp and agonizing graze of his teeth against her pulse point, and then he bit down and the world exploded into light and heat and the scent of frozen pine and the sound of his heartbeat merging with hers and the knowledge that she would never be alone again.
As the mark on her neck began to pulse with a warm and rhythmic light, and Easton pulled back to look at her with eyes that were entirely gold now, a king in his full power, a mate in his full glory, and the smile that spread across his face was the most beautiful and terrifying thing she had ever seen. But before either of them could speak, the window on the floor below them exploded outward in a shower of glass and splintered wood, and the air was suddenly thick with the scent of woodsmoke and ozone and the metallic tang of silver. A black feathered arrow embedded itself in the brickwork inches from Luci's head, and Easton shoved her behind him with a roar that shook the foundations of the building, and she watched as shadows detached themselves from the darkness below and began to climb toward them with the relentless patience of hunters who had finally cornered their prey. The Crimson Moon had found them, and the night was about to become a battlefield, and Luci realized that she had traded one life for another in the span of a single heartbeat, and she did not know if she was strong enough to survive what was coming, but she knew that she was not facing it alone, and that was the only thing that mattered.