Page 164 of May: Bloom & Bane

Disorienting? I rasp. It’s not disorienting, Sage. I was clawing my way out of a grave while you were asleep and oblivious to the enormous male in our house.

Oblivious? His voice hardens. I woke up the second the dust was out of my system. He has his own mate, Ashán. He doesn’t want ours.

Smooth, coming from the man who was about to rip him apart until our mate gave you a sternum rub back to reality.

Sage pushes the bedroom door open and guides Eden inside. Her hands smooth over our chest. Her relief and unshakeable trust flood through our senses, and I know I have no leg left to stand on.

… Maybe you were right about Damien… I mumble. I wasn’t actually going to kill him.

Sure you weren’t, Sage scoffs.

“Ash, you can stop now,” she whispers.

“Stop what?”

“Pretending the only thing you woke up feeling was anger.”

I try to look away, but she catches my jaw and holds me there.

“It was dark, wasn’t it?” she says. “Like before.”

I can’t even muster a lie. My jaw trembles against her fingers.

“You said you’d pull me back. I screamed for you: use the leash. Pull me back. And this time you—” I choke on the rest of the sentence.

A sudden pressure builds beneath our skin, followed by a freezing heat that surges down my arm. A single shadow tendril bleeds out from my wrist.

It’s solid.

It’s me.

A physical piece of the Reaper, manifesting into the world. It wraps loosely around her forearm.

Did you do that? I ask Sage.

No, he breathes. I’m not doing anything. That’s all you.

“I didn’t know,” she murmurs. “When Sage finally went into a deep sleep, I thought you were both at peace… I couldn’t feel your unease.”

“If he had wanted to hurt you,” I choke out. “I wouldn’t have been able to stop him. I was… dead to the world. Eden, I cannot go back into that dark while you’re unprotected.”

She stares at my eye, a well of endless, starless night staring back at her, and brushes a single fingertip along the dark thread wound around her arm.

I feel it. Stronger than I have ever been able to feel her before. When I break through Sage’s skin with my vorí, it hurts. It filters through his nerves as a secondary sensation. When I use my shifted hand to touch her, it is still through his biology. I am always feeling the ghost of her touch.

But this shadow—this is all me.

There is no bone between us. No flesh. No medium holding us apart. It is a literal manifestation of my soul, and as her fingertip drags across its absolute blackness, the sensation detonates through me.

I can feel the ridges of her fingerprint, and the heat of her blood. The tiny, electric static of her life-force jumping directly into my void. It is a sensation so pure and unaltered by Sage’s physiology that my side of our body gives out completely.

Eden lets out a soft gasp as we sink down before her.

“I-I can feel you, Eden.”

A shiver rips through our frame. The shadow pulses and widens under her finger, greedily flattening itself against her skin the way a starving animal presses against the first warmth it has ever been offered.

Ashán, Sage whispers in the back of our mind. She is smitten.