Page 18

“Watch out!”

Nora and I stumble to the side as the front door of the house flies open and Kalen Sorel comes barreling through, Xeran limp over his shoulders.

“Oh my gods,” Nora says, her voice going shrill. I turn to her, using my most commanding voice.

“Go to the bathroom,” I say, voice hard, even as it’s tinged with exhaustion from keeping wards up around the house. “Fill the bathtub and sink with water. Don’t come out of there until I come get you.”

She hesitates but does what I say, her eyes lingering on Xeran’s limp body for a moment before she turns and runs down the hallway.

“What happened?” I ask Kalen, who shakes as he sets his brother down on the couch.

Xeran is coated in ash, and when Kalen rolls up his brother’s shirt, there’s a singed mark down the center of his chest. I suck in a breath at the sight of it—charred and already oozing pus.

“He took a strike from the fire for me,” Kalen says, speaking as though in a trance. “I didn’t even see it coming.”

“Watch out.” I’ve never spoken to another alpha like this—with, perhaps, the exception of Xeran—but Kalen listens to me, immediately moving to the side.

Healing magic has never been my strong point as I haven’t had a lot of chances to practice, but I raise my hands over him and take a deep breath, trying to remember what the other girls said about using the energy to mend.

Kalen watches, seemingly fascinated, as the skin around the wound becomes less puckered, less red. Then he stands, his fingers working anxiously on his helmet under his arm.

“Do you think he’s going to be okay?” Kalen asks, apparently not bothered by my use of magic on his brother. “Can you fix it?”

“I can do my best,” I say through gritted teeth. “But he might have one hell of a scar.”

“The other guys are out there.” Kalen is already lifting his helmet, pulling it back on over his head. “I have to help them. Don’t let my brother die, okay?”

“Okay.”

With that, he turns and runs out the door, and I focus all my attention, all my magic and energy, on the man in front of me. It takes longer than it should, but eventually I manage to get the daemonic energy out of the wound, manage to seal it shut and ensure it won’t get infected.

I’m working on speeding up the healing process and taking away the pain when Xeran opens an eye and turns, blinking slowly when he sees me.

“Seraphina?”

“Oh, thank the gods,” I mutter, and, without meaning to, I slump forward onto him, overcome with relief that he’s okay, that my healing didn’t make everything worse. Then I remember he’s injured and might still be in pain. “Shit, sorry—”

But when I try to sit up, to pull away from him, he holds tight to me, keeping me there, pressed against him. The smell of his skin, his scent wrapping around me—it’s intoxicating, making that tug in the bottom of my stomach stronger than I’ve ever felt before.

“I’m sorry, Seraphina,” he murmurs, his voice low and gentle, like a song.

“What?” I ask, my voice muffled into his chest. Is he sorry for being injured? For saving his brother’s life so I would have to heal him?

But then he says, “I’m sorry for everything I did to you in high school. For the way I treated you. It wasn’t okay.”

Something inside me clicks into place. I’ve been holding on to what happened back then—the way he treated me—as a way to convince myself that he’s not a good person. Not a good man. And here he is, holding me, apologizing without prompting.

“It was right after you rejected me,” I say, voice shaking, and when Xeran pulls back from me, his eyes look a little clearer than before.

“What?”

“When the… when everything happened with the fire. Back then.”

Xeran’s eyes go wide, and he swallows. I’m going to tell him about what happened, even as my heart thunders in my chest and every instinct in my head tells me not to.

“I… had this group of friends. Some other girls in school who also felt like outcasts. We could all do magic, and the shame of that… well, I guess it kind of drove us together. After that day, when I tried to claim you, to ask you to prom…” I pause, taking a deep breath, trying not to think about how intent Xeran’s eyes are on me.

“I don’t remember who suggested it, but we came up with this idea to sabotage prom.

To do something that would make everyone sorry for the way they treated us.

It was never supposed to be a fire, but one of my friends…

” I close my eyes, think about her blue hair, the way she screamed when the flames overtook her. “She just took things too far.”

Xeran’s hand finds mine, and his touch startles me. But when I open my eyes, he’s looking at me with compassion, not disdain.

“You didn’t release the energy?” he asks, his eyes searching mine. “You didn’t start the fires?”

“No,” I admit, though I’ve always been confused about what, exactly, my role was that day. “But I was there when it happened. And I’ve always felt like it was partially my fault.”

“But we all blamed you,” Xeran whispers, closing his eyes. “We never even really asked for your version of things.”

“As far as I know, Valerie and Maeve got the same treatment as I did,” I whisper. “The only one of us who got off without being connected to it was Aurela.”

“ Aurela ?” Xeran asks, his eyes widening. “Aurela Cambias? Lachlan’s sister? She had something to do with this?”

“She was there,” I confirm, though she was so quiet, always silent during our meetings, that maybe it’s fair her parents swooped in with their money and made sure their daughter’s reputation wasn’t harmed by the rumors, by the swift social punishment.

“Holy shit.” Xeran pauses, takes a deep breath, and tugs on my hand to bring me closer to him. “I’m sorry, Seraphina.”

“You can call me Phina,” I whisper, swallowing, watching the expression on his face morph into something tender, something intimate.

“Okay.” Xeran’s smile is crooked, endearing. “I’m sorry, Phina. I’m sorry for everything.”

I don’t know whether it’s me or him who moves, but suddenly my lips are pressed against his and I’m sliding up onto the couch, my legs moving to either side of his hips.

I feel heat flood into me with the press of his hand against my lower back, his tongue parting my lips, his hips driving up against mine.

I feel him there, already hard against me.

“Xeran,” I whisper against his lips, and when I reach out with my magic to check, I feel that Nora is asleep in the bathroom, the door locked.

We have time.

Maybe this shouldn’t be happening as his friends are out in the fire beyond us, but it’s like everything in the world falls away, like Xeran and I are two magnets that have been slicing through the world to find one another again. Like it was inevitable.

He growls against me, and despite the injury still warm on his chest, Xeran grabs my hips, holds me, and flips us around so he’s hovering over me, his mouth hot against my neck as he kisses and sucks.

For a mind-numbing second, I think that he might mark me there—that he might just sink his teeth into the soft skin on my neck.

But he pulls back, letting out a strangled sound in his throat. His hands travel down my sides, finding the hem of my nightgown and drawing it up.

There were times in high school when we lingered on one another. When we took our time to chase pleasure together, discovering and exploring one another.

This is not one of those times.

This feels like a stolen moment, like every second we waste not getting straight to the point is another chance to be interrupted, for the universe to come between us again.

So when Xeran’s hands find my underwear, he doesn’t pull them off. He rips them, desperate, until they come away in shreds. His sweatpants are already loose and twisted around his hips, so he pushes them the rest of the way down, taking his boxers with them and exposing his cock.

When he draws back, adjusting his knees on the couch and positioning himself, I catch sight of it—the pearl of pre-cum right there at the tip, the length and width of it, how it throbs. For me .

If it’s possible, he’s grown since the last time I had him, and it makes my pussy tighten in anticipation—and a little anxiety about whether or not that thing is going to break me.

“Come here,” he growls, notching at my entrance, bracing himself over me, and taking my mouth with his, his hips forcing my legs open as he presses in.

Inch by inch, he sinks inside me, the pain and pleasure mixing until I have to bury my face in the crook of his neck and mewl against him, trying to stay quiet, trying to keep this thing between us a secret from the world.

Xeran grips my hip with a single shaking hand, as though taking it slow is the most difficult thing he’s ever had to do. I feel the restraint in every movement of his body, each time he pushes a little deeper inside me, stretching me.

And when he’s fully seated inside me, our bodies as close as they can get, he sighs, grunts, and pulls out in a swift motion before driving back in and rocking both of our bodies up together.

“ Oh ,” is all I manage before I lose myself to the pleasure, the motion of our bodies together, the bliss of not thinking, not needing anything other than Xeran and me, the push of him, the pull of me.

When I orgasm around him, it’s with my arms around his neck, hands clasped tightly together, back arching so my breasts press against his chest through my thin nightgown.

And when he releases, I feel it—his knot forming deep inside me, locking him there, pulsing against me in a way that makes the omega in me squirm with delight. Only an alpha can touch me like this, form a knot that presses the right buttons.

And only Xeran can touch me like this. Reaching every part of me. As his knot pulses, slowly releasing inside me, the slow, warm ooze of it mixing with the slick from my heat, Xeran breaths heavily and kisses me.

He kisses my forehead, my neck, and uses his hands to turn me side to side so he can press a kiss to each of my temples. His lips flutter along my hairline, my jaw, then back to my lips.

I realize I’m comfortable here, with him. Something hungry and desperate inside me finally sated, if just for a moment. The heat coming and going that quickly, galloping in with want and sitting back now, having gotten exactly the thing it wanted.

And I realize everything has just changed between us.