Jackson had never experienced anything as excruciatingly painful and devastating yet overwhelmingly satisfying. He had spent days fighting his beast while getting Layla through her heat. Every time he had latched onto her neck, something had got through the fog in his head to remind him that the bite would be a death sentence for Layla. It had been enough to make him let go, but only barely. He’d been too weak to bite her in the end anyway. This hadn’t been his first experience with an unmated female’s heat, but it was the first that had depleted all his energy completely. The first that he had felt himself. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. The men tended to the women for a day or two, rested for a couple of hours, and then returned to their full strength. They didn’t lie down f

