Page 20 of Claimed

It moves through me like an intruder and a sovereign thing at once. It has threaded itself into the mark and the curse, into every old command Morrighan left buried in my making. It sings where it should be silent, burns where it should feed.

And beneath the iron, cold herbs, lust and defiance, there’s something my blood strains to name.

My mind reaches for her before I can stop it.

Eira.

The sheer need in that name leaves me… ragged. Until her eyes widen.

She heard me.

My relief is immediate and humiliating.

‘What?’ she says, sharper now, but her hand twitches towards her throat. ‘What are you trying to say?’

I try again.

Blood. Name. Mine. Run.

The words fracture before they reach her, breaking into images of my bed chamber, her blood at my mouth. The Heartshard Glass splitting and the Tower going dark.

Fuck.

Eira flinches.

Malachi’s gaze cuts to her, and whatever remains of my composure ignites.

The growl that tears out of me is weak compared to the sound I made upstairs, but the Vaults respond. The sigils climb as red-black light, flashing between my body and the Twelve.

Malachi’s head lowers at once in submission. ‘My lord,’ he says. ‘I will not touch her.’

The words do not soothe.

A violent image moves through me, savage and raw. Everything I feel for this woman.

Mine.

The word feels carved into the underside of my ribs. Enough to force me upright. When the world lurches, Aaron moves, one hand reaching out.

‘Do not,’ I rasp.

My voice is nearly unrecognisable. Low, torn, thickened by a hunger so savage it humbles me.

I am Valentin Moretti. Don of New York. First of my line. One of the Five Blood. I have outlived wars, kings, betrayals and immortals who believed age alone made them powerful.

I am not a beast convulsing on stone because a hunter’s blood touched my tongue.

Yet pain slices up my throat. My hands close on the edge of the slab until the obsidian cracks beneath my grip.

Eira takes a step forward.

The movement is slight but it might as well be a torch thrown into dry brush.

Sharp impulse turns me towards her and I sense the blood drying beneath the clean bandage someone has applied mingling with the faintest trace of her arousal still lingering beneath fear, grief, magic and stubbornness. The wrongness of her scent has altered again.

Wrong and right and impossible.

And potent enough to… to…