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Even if I never let him get more than single finger on me.

After an hour, there was murder in his black eyes.

Today might be the day he actually turned me over his knee and spanked me.

I was wet just thinking about it.

“Enough!” Arran bellowed.

My cheeks were beginning to hurt from grinning. “You wanted me to use my power.”

He stalked closer, the beast showing clearly in his eyes. “Is this the reward you wanted? To torture me without consequences? Because therewillbe consequences, Veyka.”

I shivered.

Yes, please.

I felt that next rumbling growl, so deep it sent tremors through my chest, down to the soft mound of my stomach, straight to my pussy.

I dragged in a breath. I couldn’t take much more. The desire in my chest was becoming a physical pain. I needed my mate. I needed him inside of me. This teasing was burning me up just as badly as it was him.

One last time, I told the dancing ember of power inside of me.

I felt the tingling in my fingertips—

Hot fingers encircled my wrist.

“Arran, no—” I screamed. Blood and gore and Cyara’s pained face all flashed in my memory.

But there was no screaming. The tingling was gone.

I was flat on my back at the very edge of the clearing. Arran was over me—intact. Whole. Staring at me in shock.

“What—did you feel that?”

My heart was hammering inside my chest. “I felt you,” I managed.

Arran lifted the hand that was grasped around my wrist, holding himself above me with the other. “It felt… it was like going through the rift in the ravine.”

His gaze snapped back to me. “Were you… were you going to take me with you?”

I blinked. “I wasn’t trying to.”

“No… but you weren’t trying that day with Cyara, either. But maybe you could.” I recognized the expression on his face. Battle applications. He was eminently practical. He was thinking about the implications of me being able to move not must myself from one spot to another, but to bring someone with me.

I couldn’t think about it. Couldn’t risk it. Cyara’s pain had been enough. We didn’t have a healer with us. If I tried it and ripped Arran in half, there was no one to save him.

The ember in side of me sputtered and dimmed.

“We should go back. It is almost midday.”

My words snapped Arran from whatever bloody scenarios he was constructing in his mind. He shifted his weight away, giving me room to stand up. I folded my legs under me, leaning forward and bracing my arm. I reached for one of the thick branches that had created a border along the perimeter of the clearing, using it to pull myself to my feet.

But my eyes snagged—through the curved branches and leafy vines.

Something I recognized.

“Arran,” I breathed. Was I breathing? It felt like there was no air at all in my lungs.