Page 25 of When Two Worlds Collide (Fated Mates, Stubborn Hearts #1)

EMBER

T he third dawn breaks like a fever.

I wake in panther form, muscles coiled, breath shallow, pressed against the steady heat of Zane’s wolf.

We’ve slept tangled together like this for two nights, heat soaked into our bones, and yet still cold where it matters.

The ache has only worsened—an emptiness that burns now, no longer dull but sharp, aching, insistent.

My body aches with the weight of restraint, my soul with the hollow pain of almost being claimed.

He’s already awake.

His silver eyes gleam in the half-light, locked on mine with a gaze that strips me to nothing but hunger and need. That look—gods, that look—makes my fur rise in waves along my spine.

He growls low when I stretch. It’s not a warning. It’s a promise. A taste of what’s coming.

Today. The word forms in both minds. No more distance. No more denial. Today, we stop pretending we’re anything but starving for each other.

We hunt out of necessity, but it’s mechanical, joyless. A rabbit here. A bird there. Tokens to keep us moving. The taste of blood does nothing to satisfy the true craving writhing beneath our skin.

Every brush of fur sends lightning across my nerve endings. Every time I drink beside him, I feel his restraint slipping, his wolf circling just beneath the surface.

When I step too close to the stream, he pins me, teeth at my throat, not with threat, but promise. A claiming paused mid-sentence.

By midday, we’re circling each other in the grove, two predators unraveling at the seams. The air tastes of ozone, charged with the mating bond’s friction. We don’t speak. Words are meaningless now.

He shifts first.

And when he does, the sight hits me like a blow.

The man who emerges is raw, primal, stripped of all civility. Dirt clings to his skin, streaked with ash and dried blood. Scratches from the hunt mark his arms and back like offerings. His muscles ripple beneath tanned skin as he straightens, the sheer physicality of him undoing me.

Alpha. Untamed. Mine.

I shift too. The panther releases me reluctantly, dragged from my skin like claws through the earth. When I rise on two legs, bare and barefoot, my hair wild and mouth stained with the memory of blood, I meet his gaze without shame.

He breathes in sharply. His jaw tightens.

“Come here,” he growls, voice rough enough to shred silk.

I stay rooted. Still a challenge. Still mine. “Make me.”

The snarl that tears from his throat is pure wolf.

He closes the distance in two long strides, but I’m already moving, crashing into him in the middle of the grove. Our mouths meet in a brutal, bruising collision of need and fury. There’s no finesse left. No hesitation.

He tastes like blood and wind and fire. His tongue claims my mouth while his hands drag down my spine, rough palms mapping every inch. He grabs my hips and grinds me against his thigh until I can’t breathe from the friction.

I answer in kind—nails scoring his back, biting at his lip, dragging him closer, deeper, harder.

“Two days,” he rasps against my jaw, teeth grazing skin. “Two fucking days of watching you hunt, hearing your cries in my head, smelling your heat on the wind?—”

“Then stop watching,” I gasp, back arching as he presses me into a tree. Bark scratches down my spine, grounding me in the ache of skin and sensation. “Take it. Take me.”

His hands lift me as if I weigh nothing. I wrap my legs around him and feel the full, furious proof of his hunger pressed between us.

“Say it,” he growls, holding me pinned with his body alone. “Say it now.”

I lean in, breath ragged against his mouth. “I’m yours, Zane.”

He snarls like an animal freed from a cage.

The first joining is feral.

There’s no ceremony in it—just us, skin to skin, hunger crashing through restraint.

He takes me against the tree, one powerful thrust sinking into my heat, and I cry out, fingers buried in his hair, nails in his shoulders.

My back scrapes bark. My thighs burn from the stretch.

But I don’t care. I need this—this force, this fire, this man.

He moves inside me like he’s carving his name into bone. Each thrust is savage, perfect, necessary .

I bite his shoulder to keep from screaming, and he moans my name like it’s the only word he remembers.

But it’s not enough.

The bond—living, breathing—wants more. Not just touch. Not just joining. It wants everything.

He lays me down in the moss, never pulling out. His hands frame my face, eyes locked on mine.

“This is it,” he says, voice hoarse. “The moment we cross the threshold. After this—there’s no going back.”

“Do it,” I whisper. “Mark me. Claim me. I need it, Zane. I need you. ”

He lowers his mouth to my throat. And at the exact moment we crest together, he bites.

The pain is sharp, blazing, right. His teeth sink deep, blood mingling with orgasm, and the bond explodes.

It floods us—soundless, blinding, a tidal wave of sensation and thought and memory. I feel him—every buried fear, every ancient instinct, every flicker of doubt and certainty. His love for his pack. His ache for something more. His soul reaching for mine in perfect symmetry.

Mine, the bond whispers. Ours.

I don’t hesitate.

I push him back, straddling him, and begin to ride—slow, agonizing, beautiful. His hands grip my thighs, his control cracking with each pulse inside me.

When I feel his need peak again, I lower my head.

And I bite.

My teeth break skin. I taste blood. His roar echoes through the grove, primal and eternal.

And the bond locks.

Final. Irrevocable. True.

We collapse together, still joined, still trembling. Our bodies shake with the aftershocks of something far deeper than climax. It is completion. The connection hums between us, intimate and infinite.

“Mine,” he murmurs into my hair, voice raw.

“Yours,” I breathe. “And you?—”

He smiles against my skin.

“—are mine, wolf.”

“Always was,” he admits, drawing me closer. “From the moment you bared your throat in that tent. Even when I didn’t want it. Even when I fought it. You were always mine.”

We stay like that for hours, letting the new bond settle. It feels like a second skin. Like breathing for the first time. Every emotion—his and mine—runs both directions now. No more hiding. No more distance.

We rise only when hunger pulls us from our haze. Still naked, still marked, we hunt together in human form, laughing when he trips over a root and cursing when I steal his kill.

Later, we return to the grove. We stand in silence beneath the rising moon, then shift together in perfect synchronization.

Wolf and panther.

This time, when we come together, it is different. Slower. Deeper. A dance, not a frenzy. I bare my throat, and he licks it in reverence. We move with purpose, the ancient rhythm of true mates echoing in every motion.

When it ends, we collapse together in a heap of fur and breath and heat.

I think I could sleep like this forever.

Until the wind shifts.

Zane lifts his head. A growl coils low in his chest. I scent it too—wolves. Not ours.

Marcus steps into the grove. Human. Armed. Wary .

“Alpha,” he says without looking directly at us. “Forgive the interruption. But it’s urgent.”

Zane shifts instantly, pulling me close as I follow suit.

“This had better be life or death.”

“It is.” Marcus looks up, face pale. “Ridge Stormcrow is coming. He leads a hundred bears. Armed. Marching for River’s Edge.”

My heart stops.

“How long?” Zane asks, already moving.

“By tomorrow night.”

I dress in the clothes Marcus offers, heart racing. My body aches from the bond, from the claiming, from everything—but there’s no time to recover. No time to rest.

Zane glances at me. I nod. We’re in this now.

Mate. Alpha. Warrior.

The third night should’ve been for completing the bond, for rest, for learning each other without the bloodthirst of our animal natures.

Instead, we’ll have to wage a war.