Page 62 of The Bound Zodiac

Sixty. Seventy. Eighty. Each portal was a destination point, each one landing on the same spot, the calculations happening in the deep part of my brain that had never belonged to Earth. The Ophis part of me that remembered how to do this as instinct.

The bond was open. Wide open. I could feel Percy’s heartbeat, his breath, his absolute, unshakable focus on me, holding me steady in the storm.

One hundred. One twenty. One fifty.

The harmonic had gone from background noise to a living thing, pressing against my skull, rattling my teeth. My whole body was vibrating now, my knuckles white where I gripped my knees, sweat running down my chest. The air was silver-bright, blinding. I couldn’t see the end of the room; it was just a wall of flickering portals.

I heard Percy’s voice, somewhere beyond the roar. “Steady, honey. You’re almost there.”

I gritted my teeth. One ninety. One ninety-one. One ninety-two. The last eight were pure, dumb willpower. Nothing left in the tank. Everything burning.

Two hundred.

The sound was deafening, a physical force that punched through my body and drove a scream out of me. I almost lost it right there. The portals bucked and shivered, every one of them threatening to spiral out, to collapse, to detonate in my face and take the whole building with them.

Percy’s arms clamped around my waist, dragging me flush to his chest, his mouth right at my ear. “I’ve got you. Hold it. Hold it right there.”

The bond surged. Our magics tangled and fused, his crimson shield wrapping around my starlight, holding every single portal in place. I focused, pulling on every scrap of training, every ounce of stubbornness, and started to pull the portals together. Layer by layer, letting them fuse, merge, and collapse into each other.

If I could do this with one of my bonded mates, then with all nine of them, I could do just about anything. We’d already made one portal, however temporary, to the fucking moon. Even that was a leap of faith that could have gone catastrophically wrong. Once we perfected this. Once I could handle the surge of power, we could go further.

The pressure was insane. It felt like wrestling a hurricane. Or a black hole. But Percy held me and never wavered. Not for a second. The portals collapsed in, swirling into a single point of absolute, blinding silver. For a second the world went white, the energy roaring in my skull.

The room shuddered, and all the magic in the space sucked inward, slamming into the newborn portal at the center of the room. It hovered there, six feet wide, a perfect circle of starlight, humming with raw power.

I was gasping. Half-laughing, half-crying, barely able to see a thing. Percy’s arms were still locked around me, and I could feel him shaking with adrenaline.

“Holy shit,” I breathed.

“You did it!” Percy shouted. “I fucking knew you could do it.” And then, softer, right at my ear, “This is it. This is how you’re going to get us home.”

He was… proud of me. Percy Callahan of all fucking people. Not just proud. Overwhelmed. Every ounce of animosity, every shard of old heartbreak, every damn wall I’d built between us shattered in that moment.

I turned in his arms, still on my knees, and looked up into his face. He was beautiful. Black hair pushed back from his forehead, dark eyes burning with red light, mouth parted, every line of his face carved with awe and want and something else… something like devotion.

I kissed him. I didn’t think about it. Didn’t hesitate. I grabbed his face, wrapped my arms around his neck, and kissed him hard.

His hands flew to my waist, dragging me into his lap, crushing me to his chest. I tasted my own tears in the kiss and didn’t fucking care.

The portal still hung in the air, the sound coming from it like a freight train hurtling towards us. Wind whipped around, whistling through the tunnels of the archive, shaking the floor, filling the space with raw magic.

I broke the kiss, and before he could say a word, I pulled him by the front of his shirt, rolling us both backwards through the open portal.

We landed in my bedroom, tangled together on the thick rug beside my bed. The portal shimmered behind us for five seconds and then winked out, sealing us in the dark. Gone was the freight train, the whipping wind and the crackling starlight.

Percy stared at me, breathing hard, his hands clamped on my hips like he was terrified I’d vanish if he let go. The air was electric. Everything in me screamed, writhed and pulsed like a live wire.

I pulled his shirt off, ripping it over his head, baring the tattoos and scars and muscle I’d dreamed about for months. He was beautiful, brutal, mine. His hands were already on my hoodie, stripping it off, then dragging my t-shirt up, exposing skin inch by inch, stopping just for a second, his palms flat against my ribs, mouth pressed to my collarbone. “Honey, are you sure?”

I fisted my hands in his hair, forcing his face up to mine. “Yes, damnit, I’m sure.”

All the restraint he’d shown for months fell away, and in its place was raw, animal need. He kissed me again, hard, teeth dragging across my lower lip, his tongue in my mouth as he lifted me off the floor. My back hit the mattress and I pulled him with me, our bodies flush, skin against skin.

He tugged at my waistband without ever breaking the kiss. I tore at his belt, desperate to get at him, to feel the thick weight of his cock in my hand, but he caught my wrist, pinning me to the bed.

“Wait,” he said, breathlessly. “I need to see you. I’ve waited for too fucking long.”

He trailed his mouth down my throat, biting softly at the tender skin, licking the line of my clavicle. His hands were everywhere, palms and fingers and roughness, his breath hot on my skin.