Page 146 of Toxic

We both fell onto the bed, lying still, only panting, my head resting on his neck. My hand found his and intertwined with it, slowly playing with his fingers.

"I want to be next to you when this happens," I whispered.

Soren sighed. "You don’t have to."

"I want to. Don’t take that away from me. It’s my child too."

He didn’t respond for a while.

"Okay," he finally said.

And just then, I heard a soft knock on the door.

Soren must not have heard it because he still lay there, motionless on his back. The fingers of his other hand were tangled in my hair, gently massaging my scalp. It felt so good, and I didn’t want it to stop, but the knocking came again.

I reluctantly got up. "Someone’s knocking."

Fear flashed in Soren’s eyes. "Who is it?" He sat up quickly.

"I don’t know. I hear just one heartbeat, but it’s pretty frantic. I have to open it," I muttered, pulling on my boxers.

Frowning, I walked over and yanked the door open in one swift motion.

Someone slipped past me so quickly, I barely had time to react.

Liam.

He rushed into the room, heading straight for Soren, who was sitting naked on the bed, covering his nipples with one hand and his crotch with the other.

Liam ran to him like a rocket, immediately wrapping his arms around Soren and hugging him tightly.

I stood there with my mouth open, staring at the unnerving scene unfolding in front of me.

"Soren, Soren… How are you feeling? Is it over? Are you okay?"

I saw Soren’s face over Liam’s shoulder, looking dazed and disoriented.

"Liam, you shouldn’t have come here. This is going to get really uncomfortable, an unnecessary complication for all of us," he mumbled.

Liam straightened up, and I literally saw his body freeze the moment he noticed Soren's freshly bitten left gland and the scar on the right gland.

"Did he mark you?! During the heat?!"

Soren cursed but explained, "Jeez, Liam. I'm a beta! It's meaningless. It won’t have any effect, my glands aren’t active anyway. The change in pheromones is inconsequential."

"But he marked you before. I can see the older scar. How come I’ve never seen it before?"

Soren bit his lip. "No, it… it’s from yesterday. It already healed and left only a pale mark."

A strange silence crept into the room.

Well, there was something very peculiar about it. Since the bite was deep and the punctures were about half a centimeter wide, it surely wasn’t normal for it to heal in a day and turn into a smooth scar. There was also the case of his hickeys. They were all gone.

And who could heal each other like that in a matter of hours? Yeah, True Mates! We definitely had the whole night of intense healing during the ‘Joining’ sex!

The mark on the gland was the ONLY thing the True Mate magic couldn’t fully heal because the tissue there was different. It was designed to be marked and scarred, conveying information about the mating status of the partners. However, it usually changed from an open wound to a stable, pale scar, justlike in Soren's case. The only problem was: For regular couples it took days of healing, not hours.

The silence was somehow heavy, and Liam…?

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