And it made me love him even more.
“I am ready,” I said. “Lucien, do it.”
His eyes locked onto mine, stormy and sad yet full of impossible tenderness. “I’m so sorry,” he murmured.
Then he opened his mouth, his teeth sharpening unnaturally, and sank them into the skin of my neck.
And the world shattered.
Not from pain, though there was pain, but from the rush. Heat tore through my body while lightning splintered my bones. My blood grew molten as my vision exploded into white particles. My heartbeat tripped, then surged, then thundered—so deafening, I couldn’t hear anything else.
I could not breathe.
I could not think.
I could not be.
Lucien held me through all of it, his hands firm and his voice low as he murmured my name again and again, like a prayer. Something protective wrapped around me, even when I felt like I was dissolving from the inside out.
Then the pain folded inward, and the heat cooled.
Everything softened, as if a warm tide rolled over my body and pulled me back from the deep end. My senses expanded so much thatI could hear Lucien’s heartbeat like a second one beating rapidly inside my chest. I could smell the cedarwood on his skin, the stormy, wild essence that lived inside him, that made himhim, and the faint hint of fear he still had not shaken.
Slowly, I blinked up at him. His face hovered over mine, breath unsteady, arctic-blue eyes bright with worry. “Drew?” he asked hoarsely, voice breaking. “Are you ...”
I managed a tired smile. My body felt heavy, but my mind was crystal clear—and not just because I didn’t feel pain now.
Because whatever sort of magic my being an Eteria had on me was gone.
I had never felt that magic before now, but a moment ago, I’d felt this foreign something in my head. Something that didn’t belong.
Yet now, that something was gone, and for the first time in my entire life, I felt like I could actuallybreathe.
It was like shackles that tied me to something beyond my reach had been snapped open, broken, setting me free.
My emotions surged, uncontrollable, overwhelming, and absolutely, heartbreakingly beautiful.
“Yeah,” I whispered, reaching for his cheek, as tears, happy tears, filled my eyes. “I love you all the same.”
The last thing I saw was his expression. Relief poured all over him, making his entire body sag back, as if he could no longer hold on, and softened something on his face I had not realized he’d been keeping tightly guarded all this time.
My hand fell, and, with a smile, I closed my eyes as I welcomed the darkness of a deep, long sleep.
Epilogue
Lucien
When I told Drew Colter that I had wanted her from the first moment I laid eyes on her, I didn’t lie.
If anything, I downplayed what truly happened.
The moment I opened my eyes—in so much pain I could hardly breathe, still in my wolf form from when I tried to kill my attacker—and saw Drew’s beautiful chocolate brown eyes, I was a goner.
That feeling hadn’t changed. The more I got to know her, the stronger that feeling grew, and it became much harder to restrain. But I had restrained it nonetheless.
Because she was my Eteria, and I was terrified that any action I took would make the Eteria magic force her to love me.
Yet I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t stay away. I needed her like I’d never needed anyone.