Forty seven

But the strange thing was—I didn't feel afraid.

I felt... understood.

Because wasn't that exactly what I wanted too? To destroy what they loved? To make them hurt the way they'd hurt me?

"If I do this," he continued, voice dropping even lower, "it can't be undone."

"I know."

"You'll carry my mark."

"I know."

His eyes searched mine, looking for something—doubt, maybe, or fear, or hesitation.

"And I need to know you understand what that means here, in my territory, with my pack. A marked mate is not a guest. Not a political arrangement." His voice was careful, deliberate. "It means something permanent."

"I understand it's permanent," I said, and my voice didn't shake. "My whole life just ended. I have nothing to go back to. I understand what permanent means."

Something shifted in his face.

Not softening exactly—more like a door opening a crack, letting in just a sliver of light.

"You're not afraid," he said, and it sounded almost like a question.

"I'm terrified," I corrected honestly. "But I stopped letting fear make my decisions somewhere between the cliff and the river."

He was quiet for another moment, studying me like I was a puzzle he was trying to solve.

Then something in him decided.

"Fine." Aiden's voice turned hard, final. "But we do this my way."

He moved faster than I could track, and suddenly his hand was around my throat—not choking, not squeezing, just holding.

His action was absolutely unmistakenly possessive.

My breath caught in shock.

"You want to live?" His voice was low, commanding, the kind of Alpha voice that made wolves submit without thinking. "Then submit and become mine. Bare your neck and tell me you're mine."

My pride flared hot and immediate. "I'm not—"

My hand spasmed with agony as Zara tightened the venom's grip, and I gasped, the protest dying in my throat.

"Shhh…Tick tock," Zara purred wickedly.

I gritted my teeth, fighting against everything in me that wanted to resist, to refuse, to hold onto the last scrap of control I had left.

But survival won.

It always did.

I forced the words out: "Fine. I'm... yours."

"Louder." His hand tightened fractionally on my throat—not painful, just insistent.

"I'm yours." The words burned coming out, scraping against my pride like broken glass.

But something in my chest responded to them anyway—something that recognized truth even when I didn't want to.

Aiden's eyes flashed red, and a slow, dangerous smile curved his lips.

"The sharp-tongued girl submits..." He leaned in close enough that I could feel his breath against my skin. "Good."

Then his fangs extended—sharp, white, deadly.

And he struck.

The pain was instant and absolute—his canines sinking into the junction between my neck and shoulder, tearing through skin and muscle and straight into the nerve cluster beneath.

I screamed, my back arching off the couch involuntarily.

But then something else flooded in.

I felt heat, power and a connection.

The mate bond SNAPPED into place like a rubber band stretched too far finally releasing, and suddenly I could feel him.

Not just physically but in everything just in a little amount.

His rage—dark and cold and buried so deep he'd almost forgotten it was there.

His desire—raw and immediate and completely unwelcome.

His conflict—the war between what he wanted and what he believed he should want.

Everything he was, everything he'd ever been, suddenly laid bare in my mind.

And he could feel me too.

All of me.

All five of me.

Aiden jerked back suddenly, his eyes going wide with shock.

"What the—"

Because through the the bond, he wasn't just connected to April Quinn.

He was connected to the five wolves in me.