Cursed Bonds The Wolfless Luna's Redemption

Fault Lines

Chloe's POV

The next morning, everything changed.

I was in the library, half reading about lunar cycles and half watching the door out of habit I hadn't managed to break since the letter, when a young man approached. Golden hair, warm brown eyes, the kind of easy confidence that came from never once doubting a room would like him.

He bowed. "Lady Chloe. I am Lord Adrian of House Goldleaf."

"Hello," I said, careful the way I'd learned to be careful with everyone new since Kael read me that suspect list.

"I wanted to thank you," Adrian said. "For yesterday. Resolving the dispute between Nightshade and Thornwood. It was impressive."

"Thank you."

"I was wondering." He hesitated, the first genuine hesitation I'd seen from him. "Would you walk with me? In the gardens. I would like to hear more about how you saw the solution so quickly."

I saw no harm in it. "Sure. Let me just—"

"She's busy."

I turned to find Theron in the doorway, his expression thunderous.

"Your Majesty," Adrian said, bowing quickly. "I was only—"

"Leaving," Theron finished. "Now."

Adrian fled.

I stood, anger flaring before I could stop it. "That was rude."

"He was flirting with you."

"He was being friendly."

"He wants you." Theron crossed the room, his movements too controlled to be anything but leashed. "I could smell it on him."

"So what if he does?" I said. "I am not interested."

"Good." He backed me against the bookshelf, not hard, but there was no mistaking the intent in it. "Because you are mine."

"I am not a possession, Theron."

"Are you not?" His hand came up to my throat, light, more claim than threat. "You wear my mark. You share my bed. You are breaking my curse. If none of that makes you mine, tell me what does."

My pulse was too fast. I should have pushed him off. Instead heat pooled low in my belly, and I hated a little how easily he could do that to me.

"You are being unreasonable," I said, though my voice gave me away.

"I am being honest." His thumb moved over my pulse. "I do not share, Chloe. Not you. Not ever."

"Then maybe you should make that official," I said, the words out before I'd decided to say them.

Theron went very still. "What did you say."

"The mate bond." I held his eyes. "You want me to be yours? Then claim me. Properly."

Something dangerous moved behind his eyes. "You mean that."

"Yes."

"Say it again."

"Claim me, Theron. Make me your mate."

He kissed me like the words had broken something in him, hard and immediate, and I met it with everything I had, my hands already pulling at his shirt. He walked me backward until the shelf dug into my spine and neither of us cared.

"Tell me you're certain," he said against my mouth. "I need to hear it before I do this."

"I'm certain." I got his shirt open, my palms flat against his chest, feeling the marks shift under my hands. "I want this. I want you."

He lifted me onto the reading table, scattering the book I'd been pretending to read, and pulled my skirts up in one rough motion. "If I claim you, there is no undoing it. Not for either of us."

"I don't want it undone."

That seemed to be all he needed. He got his trousers open and pulled me to the edge of the table, and when he pushed into me I gasped at how deep it went, how full I felt with nothing eased into it slowly.

"Look at me," he said, voice wrecked. "I need you looking at me."

I did. His eyes had gone nearly black, and the marks along his collarbone had started to glow faintly, like they already knew what was coming.

He set a hard pace immediately, no patience left in him, one hand braced on the table beside my hip and the other gripping my thigh to pull me into every thrust. I wrapped my legs around him and held on, the table legs scraping against the stone floor.

"Say you're mine," he demanded. "Say it while I'm inside you."

"I'm yours." I dug my nails into his shoulders. "Only yours, Theron."

"And I am yours." He caught my jaw, forced my eyes to stay on his. "Whatever that curse wanted from me, it doesn't get to have this too. This is only ours."

The pleasure built fast and rough, his thumb finding my c**t and working it in time with his thrusts until I was shaking, until the light building under my skin matched the light building under his. I came apart with a cry I didn't try to hold back, and he followed almost immediately, a broken sound tearing out of him as he spilled into me, his whole body shuddering.

The marks on his chest didn't just crack this time.

They shattered.

Light poured out of him, so bright I had to shut my eyes, and I felt it pour into me at the same time, molten and enormous, more than any of the times before. When it faded we were both gasping, still tangled together on the table amid a mess of scattered books.

"That was more," he said, breathless. "More than it should have been."

"Is that bad?"

"I don't know anymore what bad even means with you." He pulled me against his chest, both of us shaking. "How many marks are left."

I looked. Only two, faint, barely visible.

"Not many," I said. "Maybe one more. Maybe two."

"And then I'm free." He said it like he didn't quite believe it yet. "We're free."

I thought of Marcus's theory. The transfer. The thing nobody had explained. I did not say any of it out loud, because I did not want to watch hope leave his face twice in one night.

"What if the connection fades," I asked instead, quieter. "Once the curse is gone. What if you look at me after and only see the woman who fixed you."

"It won't fade."

"You don't know that."

"I do." He tipped my chin up. "Because what I feel for you was never only the curse's doing. It's real, Chloe. As real as anything I've ever known."

"You're sure."

"I've never been more sure of anything in my life." He kissed me, slow this time, nothing left to prove. "I love you. I think I've loved you since the clearing."

My chest ached in the best way. "I love you too."

We stayed there a long while, wrapped around each other among the ruined books, and for once I let myself simply feel it without picking it apart. Somewhere below us, I knew, Kael was still asking his questions, and Marcus was still hunting for what those eight pages had said, and none of it could reach us in that room.

It was near dawn when I finally sat up to dress, and that was when I saw it.

The last sliver of moon was sliding behind the clouds outside the window, and on Theron's chest, the final mark, the one neither of us had counted, the one that shouldn't have still been there, had begun, very faintly, to glow.