Chapter 4 A Lunar Claiming
Vuk Kael Laskovic
Mine.
The word is a war drum in my skull.
I carry her through the fortress like I’m carrying the moon itself, and every wolf between me and my chambers drops to their knees so fast their spines crack. Good. Let them break. I will break the fucking world if one more person breathes the same air as her before I’ve buried myself inside her and made sure she’ll never smell like anyone else again.
The doors to my private wing explode off their hinges the second my shoulder touches them. Wood splinters. Iron screams. I don’t slow down.
I kick the bedroom door shut behind us; the impact rattles the walls hard enough to shatter a mirror. I don’t care. Nothing exists except the tiny, shaking female in my arms and the scent of lunar blood and slick that is currently rewriting every law of my existence.
I set her on her feet only long enough to rip the remnants of that bastard’s coat off her body. Silk tears like tissue. The collar Cassian dared put on her snaps between my fingers; I crush the silver into dust and let it fall.
She stands naked, trembling, silver eyes huge, lips bleeding where he split them.
I drop to my knees.
Not submission. Worship.
I drag my nose up the inside of her thigh, inhaling so deep my lungs burn. Her scent is everywhere: terror, grief, slick, moonlight, mine. My fangs ache. My cock is so hard the head is purple, leaking a steady stream down my thigh like I’m a boy again.
“Fuck,” I snarl against her skin. “You’re going to kill me and I haven’t even tasted you yet.”
She makes a broken sound. Her hands fist in my hair, not pushing, not pulling, just holding on like I’m the only solid thing left in her world.
I can’t wait.
I lift her again, carry her into the obsidian bathroom, and step straight into the pool-sized bath without bothering with taps. Hellfire flares from my palms; the water boils in seconds, steam rising like a storm.
I lower us both into it.
She gasps as the heat hits her welts, her bruises, the raw whip marks across her back. I growl so loud the surface ripples. Someone is going to die screaming for every mark on her skin, and I already know whose heart I’ll be eating raw before dawn.
I wash her myself.
My hands (hands that have ended bloodlines) move over her like I’m handling something holy and breakable. I scrub Cassian’s scent from her throat, her breasts, between her legs, until the only thing left is her and me and the bond that’s currently setting my blood on fire.
She’s shaking, whimpering, thighs trying to close even as slick pours over my fingers.
I can’t stop touching her.
I can’t stop smelling her.
I can’t stop hearing that single word echoing in my skull like a death knell and a prayer.
Mate. Mate. Mate. Mate. Mate.
I lift her out dripping, carry her back to the bedroom, and lay her on the black furs like I’m offering her to every dark god I’ve ever defied.
She stares up at me, silver eyes glowing, chest heaving.
I stand over her, robe long gone, cock jutting up against my stomach, knot already swelling at the base. My claws are fully extended. My fangs won’t retract. Veins of liquid gold crawl under my skin like living fire.
I have never been this close to losing control in three and a half centuries.
I have never wanted anything the way I want to split her open and live inside her until the stars burn out.
“Look at me,” I rasp.
She does.
I let her see everything: the monster, the devil, the male who will burn kingdoms to keep her.
Her thighs fall open on their own.
The growl that rips out of me is not wolf. It’s not demon. It’s something older, something that was born the first time the moon looked at hellfire and decided it wanted to burn.
I drop to my knees between her legs.
My hands grip her hips hard enough to bruise.
I lean down until my mouth hovers over her slick, swollen cunt, and I breathe her in like oxygen after centuries underwater.
“Three hundred and fifty years,” I snarl against her, voice shredded. “I waited three hundred and fifty fucking years for this pussy, and some bastard thought he could hunt you first?”
I lick one long, filthy stripe from her entrance to her clit.
She screams, back arching off the furs.
I do it again. And again. And again.
Until she’s sobbing my name, until her thighs are clamped around my head, until her slick is painted across my chin and dripping off my fangs.
Until the only word left in the universe is mine.
I rise over her, line my cock up, knot throbbing against her entrance, and meet her eyes.
“I’m going to ruin you, little moon.”
The words scrape out of my throat like broken glass. I’m shaking. Actually shaking. Three-hundred-and-fifty-year-old bones rattling because the tiny female beneath me is trembling harder than I am.
She should be screaming.
She should be clawing at my face, kicking, begging me to stop.
Instead her thighs fall open wider, slick glistening on swollen pink folds, and the scent of her fear-laced arousal slams into me so hard my vision whites out for a second.
Fuck.
I can taste her terror on my tongue, sharp and metallic beneath the honey of her slick. It’s the most intoxicating thing I’ve ever swallowed. I want to drown in it.
Her chest heaves. Those perfect tits rise and fall in frantic little jerks. Silver eyes (moonlit, ancient, terrified) are locked on my face like she’s staring at the end of the world.
Because she is.
She knows what I am.
She knows what’s coming.
Her pulse is a trapped bird under the thin skin of her throat. I can see it fluttering. I can hear it. I can feel it in the bond that’s currently carving my soul out with a dull blade and handing it to her on a silver platter.
I lean down slowly, deliberately, letting her feel every inch of the monster caging her in.
My cock drags up the inside of her thigh, leaving a wet trail of pre-cum and her own slick. The head nudges her entrance, thick and brutal, knot already so swollen it’ll never fit without tearing her apart.
She whimpers.
A single, broken sound that spears straight through my chest and lodges behind my ribs forever.
I stop.
Because if I move now, I’ll kill her.
I will literally fuck her to death and not be able to stop.
My claws dig into the furs on either side of her head, shredding them. My arms shake with the effort of holding still.
“Breathe,” I snarl through fangs that won’t retract.
She sucks in a ragged gasp. Tears spill from the corners of her eyes, carving silver tracks down her temples into her white-gold hair.
Good.
Cry for me, little moon.
Cry while I destroy you.
I drop my forehead to hers. My breath saws in and out, ragged and ruined.
“Look at me,” I command again, softer this time.
She does.
And I let her see everything.
Every century of starvation.
Every corpse I left cooling because nothing ever filled the void.
Every time I woke up hard and furious and alone.
All of it, gone.
Because she exists.
Because she’s here.
Because she’s mine.
Her lips part on a sob.
“Vuk…” she whispers.
The first time anyone has said my name in three centuries without permission.
The first time anyone has said it like a prayer instead of a curse.
I lose the last thread of control.
I thrust.
One brutal, punishing stroke that buries me to the hilt inside the tightest, hottest heaven I’ve ever known.
She screams.
The sound rips through the room, high and shattered and perfect.
Her walls clamp down so hard my vision blacks out. Her nails rake bloody furrows down my back. Her legs lock around my waist like she’ll die if I pull out.
I can’t move.
I can’t fucking move.
Because if I do, I’ll come instantly, knot swelling, locking us together while I pump her so full she’ll taste me in her throat for weeks.
I drop my weight onto my forearms, caging her completely, and bury my face in her neck.
Her scent is everywhere. Inside me. Under my skin. Rewriting my fucking DNA.
Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine.
I lick the crescent scar at her throat (Selene’s mark) and feel her whole body jolt.
“Say it,” I growl against her pulse. “Say who you belong to.”
She’s crying harder now, shaking her head, but her hips roll up to meet mine like she can’t help it.
I pull out slow, torturously slow, until only the head is inside, then slam back in so hard the headboard cracks against the wall.
She screams again.
“Say it.”
Another slow drag out. Another brutal thrust in.
Her back bows off the furs. Her nails dig into my shoulders hard enough to draw blood.
“Yours,” she sobs. “I’m yours, I’m yours, please—”
The word please undoes me.
I fuck her like the world is ending.
Hard. Deep. Relentless.
Every thrust punches a broken sound from her throat. Every drag back makes her chase my cock like she’ll die without it. The wet slap of our bodies is obscene. The scent of sex and blood and slick is so thick I can taste it.
Her walls flutter around me, the first warning.
I snarl, fangs scraping her shoulder.
“Not yet.”
I slow down, grinding deep, rolling my hips until she’s keening, tears streaming, begging in broken little gasps.
Only when she’s right on the edge, shaking apart beneath me, do I let myself go.
I slam in one final time.
My knot swells, locking us together.
I bite down on the soft spot between her neck and shoulder (hard, deep, permanent).
Blood floods my mouth. Lunar power explodes across my tongue like starlight and sin.
She comes with a scream that shatters something inside both of us.
Her cunt milks my cock in vicious pulses, dragging my own release out of me in thick, endless ropes. I roar against her skin, hips jerking, pumping her full until it leaks around my knot and soaks the furs beneath us.
I keep coming.
I can’t stop.
I don’t want to stop.
I collapse on top of her, careful not to crush her even while the beast inside me howls to keep her pinned forever.
She’s crying quietly now, soft, overwhelmed sobs that make my chest ache in ways I didn’t know it could.
I lick the bite closed, gentle, reverent.
Then I press my forehead to hers again.
“I’m sorry,” I rasp, voice wrecked. “I’m sorry, little moon. I tried to be gentle. I swear I tried.”
She laughs through her tears (a tiny, broken sound that spears straight through my heart).
“You weren’t gentle,” she whispers. “You were perfect.”
I close my eyes.
Three hundred and fifty years.
And in one night, one tiny lunar girl rewrote every rule of my existence.
I’m never letting her go.
Not tonight.
Not tomorrow.
Not when the sun burns out and the gods themselves turn to dust.
She is mine.
And I am hers.
Forever.