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The tension in my chest eased. It had been there when I woke, that insistent urge that had pulled me free of the clearing beside the lake and landed me back in Baylaur. But only when Arran was at my side, close enough to touch, did it relax enough that I could take a full breath.

“What happened in the throne room?” I asked. Maybe I could distract him from that all-consuming worry.

Mistake.

His black eyes darkened. An impossibility that only I could see.

“You disappeared,” he said, voice little more than the growl of a beast.

“I am aware of that,” I said. “But what did it look like… what happened before, and after?”

“You lit up. Your entire body was glowing, bursting with…” Arran tore his eyes away from me.

“With power,” I finished, the words a tremble on my lips. It was unbelievable. But when I looked inside, I could still feel it there. The ember of power, bright and strong, at the core of my being.

I tried to shake my head, but quickly thought better of it, the pounding increasing. I stilled myself, taking a deep breath. “I don’t understand. I’ve never had power… my mother—” A feral growl from Arran, “—tried for decades to force magic to grow in me. How is it possible that it awakened at our Joining, of all moments?”

Arran’s face clouded and I realized—he understood something I did not. My mind whipped through possibilities, trying to make sense of things. But nothing materialized, nothing real.

“Our blood was Joined,” he said carefully.

“So? That is what the Joining is—it is symbolic of our joint commitment to Annwyn or some other Ancestors-blasted nonsense.” I was babbling, I knew it. But the fear was gone from Arran’s eyes, so suddenly, and that unnerved me more than anything.

“I think the mingling of our blood awoke the magic within you… as well as the bond between us,” he said, his voice full of emotion.

We were talking about mingling blood, not vows of love.What the hell is going on?

“What bond? What are you talking about?” I asked, hating the quiver of my bottom lip.

Arran’s black eyes searched mine, delving into my soul with an intensity that I hadn’t felt from him since those precious, painful minutes we’d stolen together before the Tower of Myda.

“The mating bond,” he said softly.

The world shifted again. But this time I remained in one place as everything around me reordered itself.

Arran’s hand closed around mine. “You are my mate.”

11

ARRAN

“Mate?”

She blinked rapidly, the only damned thing she could do laying prone in that bed. I could feel the emotion rippling off of her, though I couldn’t identify it.

I’d been too fast. Too much, too soon.

But when she demanded that I come and sit beside her on the bed, I thought she’d felt it, too. That clawing need that could only be eased by proximity to one another.

Veyka wasn’t ready to hear that I loved her. I’d known that from the moment I recognized the emotion within myself. Why would she be any readier for this—a bond that would tie us together for the rest of our immortal lives.

We are already tied together.

I shoved that thought aside. Annwyn didn’t matter—not in that moment. Only Veyka.

“I can feel it,” I said, lifting the hand that didn’t hold hers to place on my chest. “For me, it feels like a pull—constant, demanding. A pull towards you. I knew it the moment our blood mixed.”

I swallowed hard, as afraid of my next words as I had ever been of anything in my life. “Do you feel it, Veyka?”