Chapter 139: Deleted Scene

(Immediately following the almost-rejection, the desperate confessions, and the raw kiss where they chose each other again)

The door to our bedroom slammed shut harder than I meant it to.

Valdus had me against it before the sound even finished echoing. One of his hands fisted in my hair, the other gripped my jaw, tilting my face up so he could look at me. His eyes were almost black, the gold bleeding through like cracks in dark glass. He was breathing hard. So was I.

“You almost let me do it,” he said, voice low and rough. “You almost let me reject you.”

“I couldn’t,” I answered. My throat felt scraped raw. “I told you I couldn’t.”

“You still stood there and listened while I said the words.” His thumb pressed against my lower lip, not gently. “Do you know what that did to me? Hearing my own voice try to cut the bond while you just… stared at me with those eyes?”

I didn’t get the chance to answer.

His mouth crashed onto mine.

There was nothing careful in the kiss. It was teeth and heat and the sharp edge of everything we had almost destroyed. I bit his lip hard enough to make him growl. He answered by shoving his tongue against mine and pinning my hips to the door with his own. I could feel how hard he already was. The thick length of him pressed against my stomach through his clothes, and a pulse of heat went straight down between my legs.

I shoved at his chest just enough to create space, then yanked his shirt up. He pulled it the rest of the way off and threw it aside. My hands immediately mapped the hard planes of his stomach, the ridges of muscle, the raised scars. He was hot under my palms. Alive. Still here.

Valdus dragged my shirt over my head in one motion. The second the fabric cleared my arms, his mouth was on my throat, open and hungry, teeth scraping over the mark he had given me months ago. The bond flared white-hot. My knees almost gave out. He caught me by the waist and hauled me up. I locked my legs around his hips as he carried me toward the bed.

We fell onto it in a tangle of limbs. He braced himself over me, staring down with an expression that was half fury, half desperation.

“You’re not leaving,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“I’m not.”

“Say it again.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

Something in him snapped.

He reached down, ripped my shorts and underwear down my legs in one hard pull, and tossed them away. His own pants followed. When he settled back between my thighs, the thick head of his cock dragged through the wetness already gathered there. I was soaked. He felt it. A dark, satisfied sound left his chest.

He didn’t ease in.

He pushed forward in one deep, relentless thrust that forced the air from my lungs. The stretch burned in the best way—full, almost too much, exactly what I needed. My back arched off the bed. Valdus groaned like the feeling of me had punched the air out of him too.

“Fuck,” he muttered against my neck. “You feel… fuck.”

He started moving.

There was no slow build. No gentle rhythm. He fucked me like he was trying to carve the truth into my body—that I was still his, that the rejection had failed, that the bond was still alive and vicious between us. Each thrust was deep and hard, the sound of skin meeting skin sharp in the quiet room. The headboard knocked against the wall. I met every stroke, nails digging into his back hard enough to leave marks.

His mouth found my breast. He sucked one nipple between his teeth and bit down just shy of too hard. The sharp edge of pain mixed with the thick slide of his cock and made my vision spark. I cried out. He did it again to the other side, then licked the sting away like an apology he didn’t actually mean.

“Look at me,” he ordered.

I forced my eyes open. His face was above mine, jaw clenched, eyes locked on me while he drove into me over and over. The intensity in his gaze was almost too much. It felt like he was trying to see inside my skull and rip out every doubt I had ever carried.

“You’re mine,” he rasped. “Not because of a mark. Not because of a title. Because you stayed when I gave you every reason to run. Say it.”

“I’m yours.”

“Again.”

“I’m yours, Valdus.”

He growled and shifted the angle of his hips. The next thrust dragged directly across the spot that made my thighs shake. I gasped. He noticed. Of course he noticed. He kept the same angle and fucked me harder, chasing the sounds I made like they were the only thing keeping him sane.

One of his hands slid down between us. His fingers found my clit and rubbed in tight, rough circles that matched the rhythm of his cock. The dual sensation was brutal. Perfect. My orgasm built fast and mean, coiling low in my stomach until I could barely breathe.

“Come,” he said against my mouth. “I want to feel it. Give it to me.”

I broke with a broken cry, walls clamping down around him in hard pulses. The pleasure tore through me so intensely my vision went white at the edges. Valdus cursed and kept thrusting through it, dragging the climax out until I was shaking and oversensitive beneath him.

He didn’t stop.

He pulled out only long enough to flip me onto my stomach, then hauled my hips up and pushed back inside in one smooth, deep stroke. The new angle made me moan into the sheets. He covered me with his body, chest to my back, one hand braced beside my head, the other gripping my hip hard enough to bruise. His mouth found the mark on my neck again and he bit down as he fucked me, not hard enough to re-mark, but hard enough that I felt claimed all over again.

“I almost lost you,” he muttered against my skin, voice wrecked. “I stood there and tried to cut the bond and you still wouldn’t let me. Do you understand what that does to a male like me?”

I could only nod, forehead pressed to the mattress, fingers twisted in the sheets.

He reached under me again, fingers sliding through the wetness where we were joined, and rubbed my clit with the same relentless pace as his thrusts. A second orgasm started building almost immediately—sharper, almost painful in its intensity. I pushed back to meet him, chasing it.

“That’s it,” he growled. “Take it. Take all of it.”

I came again with a muffled scream. My body locked up around him. Valdus’s rhythm stuttered. He drove into me once, twice more, then buried himself to the hilt and came with a low, guttural groan that sounded like it had been ripped out of him. I felt the hot pulse of him spilling inside me, the way his cock twitched with every wave.

He stayed deep for a long moment, breathing hard against the back of my neck. His hand stroked down my side, almost gentle now, tracing the curve of my waist like he needed to remind himself I was still solid and real.

Eventually he pulled out. I felt the slow slide of his release leaking out of me. He rolled onto his side and pulled me with him so we faced each other. His fingers brushed damp hair away from my face. The gold had faded from his eyes, leaving them dark and tired and completely focused on me.

“I meant it,” I said quietly. My voice was hoarse. “I’m not leaving. Not now. Not later.”

His thumb stroked across my cheekbone. “I know. But I’m going to need to feel it for a while. Every time the fear starts crawling back up my throat, I’m going to need to be inside you until it shuts up again.”

A weak, exhausted laugh left me. “That sounds like a threat.”

“It’s a promise.”

He leaned in and kissed me—slower this time, deeper, the kind of kiss that had nothing left to prove and everything left to keep. I sank into it, into him, into the residual heat still pulsing between my legs and the way his arm locked around my waist like he was daring the world to try and take me again.

Outside, the pack moved through its evening routines. Somewhere in the house the bond between us still hummed, raw and newly reinforced.

We had almost broken everything.

Instead we had chosen the wreckage, the scars, the ugly need that refused to die.

And for tonight, that choice was enough.