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“I said beg.”

Her voice came out shattered.

“Please.”

“Please, what?”

“Don’t—” She gasped, back bowing as she pushed against me. “Don’t stop.”

I grinned, savage.

Then I slammed into her, deep and hard, and didn’t stop. Her cries filled the cave, heat pouring from her like wildfire. Thebond snapped taut, alive, burning.

Her cry tore from her throat, raw and unguarded, nothing held back. No hatred. No venom. Just the sound of a woman breaking open, giving in to the very thing she’d spent years trying to kill. Her body clenched around me, spasming, trembling so violently I had to grip her hips to keep her grounded.

She was pulsing around me, drowning in it, and I could feel every twitch, every desperate, helpless wave crashing through her.

Lexa’s fingers clawed at the furs beneath her, grasping for something solid as her spine bowed, her cheek pressed to the ground. Her breath came in shattered bursts, gasps that barely found their way past her parted lips.

And then I followed.

The pressure coiled low in my gut snapped, dragging me under with her. I groaned her name against her skin, sinking into that heat, that bond, burying myself so deep I forgot where she ended and I began. My knot swelled, locking us together, and she cried out again—softer this time, as if she felt it too, that final claim sinking into her bones.

I didn’t move. Couldn’t. The knot held me inside her, tight and claiming. I stayed like that, over her, breath heavy against her back, hands resting on her hips as I tried to force my wolf back under control. He was pacing, howling with satisfaction. Her scent was everywhere now, slick with heat and surrender, with mine and it made every instinct I had want to do it again. Mark her again. Make her beg louder.

The fire crackled beside us, casting soft amber light over her bare back, her torn clothes, the bruise-dark bite mark blooming on her neck. Blood welled there in a slow, steady line.

She was silent. But not distant.

I felt her. Through the bond.

Exhausted. Spent. Still angry. Still afraid. But something in her had quieted. The wolf inside her was no longer growling. No longer fighting. She was stretched out, curled up in the dark of her mind, purring in time with mine.

“I told you,” I said, voice rough in the stillness, low against her ear. “You can’t outrun this.”

She didn’t answer.

But her body relaxed by inches, little by little, until she was no longer trembling. Until she was breathing. Until she was simply… still.

I eased down beside her, pulling the cloak back over her bare skin, one hand sliding under her to rest against her stomach.

“Sleep,” I murmured, not asking. “You’re going to need it.”

And this time, she didn’t fight me.

CHAPTER 20

Lexa

The last rune holds. Barely. I woke to the weight of him.mHis arm slung over my waist. His breath slow and warm against the back of my neck. The heat between my legs still slick, sore, and unmistakablyhis. And I wanted to scream.

The fire had died down to embers, the cave chilled and silent. But I was burning from the inside out—again. Not from heat. From regret.

Gods, what have I done?

I tried to move, to untangle myself from the mess of limbs and furs, but the second I shifted—

“Don’t you fucking dare,” he growled behind me, voice deep with sleep and something darker.