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I felt him come. Pouring himself inside me. Filling me. All of his manhood. All of his strength. Then, he let out a primal howl and sank his fangs into the base of my neck.
Marking me. Claiming me.
I came around him. I felt his cock grow wider still, knotting himself inside of me. He held me like that, locked in me. The world could rise and fall around us, but he would hold me there, legs spread, filled. A bond only he could break. Wave after wave of pleasure rippled through me as he grew and grew, molding me to him. Holding me in position, in ultimate submission for hours. For a whole day. Beneath him. Open for him. He made me both helpless and powerful all at once.
He bit me again and again. Marking me for good.
I lost all sense of time and space. We were one. Fated mates. Alphas joined forever.
Finally, he turned me around, still inside me so now I straddled him. And it was time for me to mark him too.
I bit him on his chest, right over his heart. He would scar, but he would heal. We would bear each other’s marks forever.
My Alpha. My mate. The man that made me whole.
Chapter Eighteen
“Anson,” I gasped. “My God.”
As his mark took hold, the bond between us took hold. His thoughts. His heart. All of it lay open to me. And mine to him.
We went to the water, and I knew then what Wild Lake really meant. This was a baptism. A binding. A new commitment. I saw Anson with open eyes and an open mind now. His hopes. His fears. His darkest days.
He had been so young. So vulnerable when the fae had come for his pack. He’d tried to fight back. Tried to stop it. But they had held him bound in Dragonsteel as they cut his father down. The hole it had opened in Anson’s heart could never be fully healed. But that too had scarred over. Made him stronger. Ruthless. A survivor.
I saw myself through his eyes, too. Naked. Glorious. He had looked at me with hope and sadness all those years ago when I’d found him wounded and bleeding.
There were hard things, too. He’d been so hungry back then. So damaged. He had wanted to die. Little by little, I pulled him back. Even the blackest parts of him had tried to protect me. To hold me.
I felt the agony of the fae’s most horrific crime. They had twisted Anson’s soul, driving out the goodness, hoping to leverage his hate and anger toward them. Twisting it. Making him become X. Thinking they could bend him to do their bidding.
But Anson had been too strong, too cunning for even the fae. They could not hold him. So for years, he had existed as only X. Not remembering who he had once been. Believing only the worst things about himself.
Then I saw Lissa through his eyes. The chameleon she had been. She had played on the one fear she knew could break him.
Me.
She showed him how to be Anson again, but never let him understand that he was also X. Anson had told me the truth. I knew it in my soul, but now I could see it in his.
I saw him in the dungeon as Anson. Bleeding. Pleading with me to leave him to die. The blood. The wounds Anson suffered he’d inflicted on himself. He had known there was something wrong with him. He had sensed X, but there was no memory. He had told me the truth. It wasn’t a betrayal. It was the curse. But he’d tried to cut it out. Tried to hold it at bay because he thought he was going to hurt me.
He hadn’t known. The fae had used him time and again.
But that was all over now. He was whole. And he was mine.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I wish I could have seen you with my heart sooner than I did.”
“Shh,” he said. “You were fighting your own battles, too. Thank you. I know all the hard things you’ve had to do. The past doesn’t matter now, for either of us.”
I kissed him. “But it does, my love. We can never forget. The fae split you in half. They turned you against yourself.”
“I don’t care. I’ll never be that again.”
I smiled. “You will. X is you. I love that part of you, too. It’s the two halves of you. Just like the human and the wolf parts of you. They make you one. I’m just so sorry you were made to believe that you were bad. That there was something wrong with you.”
He brushed a hair out of my eye. “Tempest…don’t you see? Being Anson and X isn’t what makes me whole. You do.”
He took my hand and placed it over his beating heart. His pulse. My own. They were one and the same now. I could feel my heat rising again. Soon enough, I’d need him to take me. Mark me over and over, strengthening our bond. It could never be broken.
