Page 186 of Veil of Blood and Bone

Wren’s shadows move peculiarly. The hoarfrost tips his darkness, blackness hissing against ice.

Isvargr snaps his teeth in warning, another bluster of wind rustling snow and hail-shredded leaves to earth. I flinch and lift an arm to block pellets of hail.

Through it all, the scent of Helene’s blood cuts through the blizzard. For a tense moment, there’s nothing but her, not the giant, not the cold. Not the ruin of the forest around us.

Only her.

Fuck.

Familiar, primordial hunger uncurls inside me with disgusting familiarity. Something old enough for creatures like the ice wolf to remember, through plague pits and killing fields slick with gore and opened bodies.

This is worse.

Much worse.

Mate blood is a living thing, crawling, hooking into my ribs with its demands.

Feed.

My canines stretch, involuntary motion, sheer terror rising at how badly I want her. The physical reactions are outside my control in every way.

I burrowed my fangs in the velvet soft skin of her neck, tearing down to puncture the vein. She went still in my arms, the desert stretching and scorching and killing around us. Then life giving blood flowed into the cavernous pieces of me and filled them all. For the first time since the last, I was whole.

And she was empty.

The last time, the only one that counts.

Isvargr rumbles something in his ancient language but my incisors ache with violence. I prick my tongue, tasting copper before I realize I’ve bitten myself.

Helene shifts, contained in the car, and clutches Audra tighter to her side. Panic and frustration tighten her skin, and the monster inside me surges and blurs my vision.

She’s mine.

The words slam through me with enough force to stagger, and I reach for Wren.

Gods. I never should have come near her again.

Not when I feel her heartbeat within me. When I sense her fear, hear her pain. Smell her blood over miles.

Blinking, I launch at Isvargr again, angling to avoid a swipe of those claws. Metal crunches when he grips the car tighter. Within, Audra screeches a wordless prayer.

Shadows snake around my ankles before Isvargr roars. The darkness freezes solid.

I bend my legs to take the force of it, to absorb the sound. And when I open my eyes, the creature’s tail slams me across the midsection. Frozen shade breaks and scatters.

From the corner of my gaze, Wren winces with theatrical largeness. “Hell, Nicholas, that looked painful. On a scale of one to catastrophic emotional damage, how are you doing?”

“Shut up.” I spit blood into the snow.

“Oh, sure. Great. Good talk.”

The frost giant swipes at Wren, who vanishes into shadow a heartbeat before frigid claws carve through the space where he’d stood.

He materializes behind the beast. “You missed me, Elsa.”

Ice like javelins erupt toward him and Wren laughs, wild, sharp around the edges.

“See, there he is. I knew he spoke like a bitch.”