He pauses when fully seated, his chest heaving against my back, his length throbbing inside me like a living brand. I can feel every ridge, every vein, every pulse of blood through his shaft. For one suspended moment, we're frozen together, joined but still warring.
"Look how perfectly you take me," he says, voice rough with wonder and possession. “This little cunt of yours so wet and eager for my cock. Almost as if you’ve been waiting for me your whole puny human life.”
“Not even a little bit,” I gasp, the denial weak even to my own ears.
He pulls back slowly, the drag of his hardness against my sensitive inner walls drawing a broken sound from my lips. Then he slams forward again with brutal force, driving me against the tree. Bark tears at my skin, pain blossoming across my chest and stomach, the sensations only heightening the devastating pleasure of his length stretching me beyond my limits.
He sets a punishing rhythm, each thrust violent and precise. The clearing fills with obscene sounds—the wet impact of flesh against flesh, the animalistic grunts torn from his throat, my own desperate cries that I can no longer suppress. His hands grip my hips hard enough to leave bruises shaped like his fingers, controlling my body with unstoppable strength.
"Still fighting me?" he taunts, reaching around to pinch my sensitive bud between cruel fingers. The sharp pain sends lightning through my veins, building pressure at the base of my spine.
"Always," I manage, the word breaking on a moan as he adjusts his angle, striking something deep inside that makes my vision white out momentarily.
He chuckles, the sound dark and knowing. "Then fight this."
His rhythm speeds up, becomes impossibly harder. One hand slides up to grab my throat, squeezing just enough to restrict my air, sending dizzying waves of intensified sensation crashing through me. His other hand works between my legs, fingers circling with the perfect pressure, the perfect rhythm.
My body betrays me spectacularly. The release hits like a hammer striking white-hot metal, explosive and transformative. My inner walls clamp down on his invading length, rippling and pulsing around him. I scream his name, the sound torn from my throat as pleasure beyond anything I've ever known consumes me.
"That's it," he growls, never slowing his brutal pace. "Take what I give you."
The pleasure crests and breaks, only to build again immediately as he adjusts his angle, targeting that devastating spot inside me with ruthless precision. I'm caught in an endless storm of sensation, my body no longer my own. A second release crashes through me before the first fully recedes, my mind fracturing under the onslaught.
"Please," I hear myself beg, not sure if I'm asking him to stop or never stop.
His rhythm falters, grows erratic. I feel the base of his length beginning to swell, the knot forming. Panic slices through the haze of pleasure. This is the final claim, the irrevocable joining.
"No—" I gasp, struggling again, but my strength is spent, my body limp with exhaustion and overwhelming sensation.
Cadeyrn pulls me upright against his chest, one arm locked around my waist, the other hand splayed possessively across my throat. His lips brush my ear, his breath hot against my skin.
"That's it," he snarls, "Give in."
All of the pleasure—his length inside me, his hand on my neck—hurtles me toward another release with brutal efficiency. When it hits, the orgasm tears through me like a forge explosion, my inner muscles clamping down on him in rhythmic pulses that wring a guttural sound from his throat.
"Yes," he hisses against my neck, hand squeezing tight. "Squeeze me just like that. Take everything I give you. Take my fucking knot."
With a final, brutal thrust, he seats himself fully inside me, his swelling knot pushing past my entrance with excruciating pressure. For a heartbeat, I'm certain it will tear me apart. The pain is blinding, too much, impossible?—
Then the knot pops inside, locking into place, and agony transforms into delirious pleasure as he begins to pulse. Hot spurts of his seed flood my depths, each one triggering another wave of pleasure that radiates outward from where we're joined.
As his knot locks us together, his teeth find the perfect spot where my neck meets my shoulder—the claiming gland that's throbbed with anticipation since the first day of the Hunt. His bite is savage, canines sinking deep, breaking skin and tissue with brutal efficiency.
I scream, the sound inhuman, as claiming hormones flood my system. The bite ignites something primal inside me, a chemical reaction as violent as quenching red-hot steel. My body responds with a final, devastating release that seems to consume my very soul. The world fractures around us, reality itself bending under the force of our joining.
Magic explodes through the clearing—raw, wild, ancient power that has nothing to do with court politics or human understanding. Dormant plants burst into sudden, violent bloom around us, flowers erupting from winter-dead soil. The blackthorn tree behind us groans, branches bending to form a cathedral-like canopy above our joined bodies. The ground beneath us shifts, roots erupting to create a natural nest, cradling our entwined forms.
But most shocking of all is the mental connection that slams into place between us. The barrier between our minds shatters like brittle iron, leaving us completely exposed to each other.
I'm hurled into Cadeyrn's memories—centuries of isolation, of ruthless self-control, of court physicians forcing bitter concoctions down his throat whenever emotion threatened to break through his perfect mask. I feel the weight of immortality crushing him, the endless politics, the calculated cruelty of a system that values power above all else. I witness the exact moment he saw me at the Gathering Circle—the shock of recognition that shook seven centuries of perfect control, the instant, unwanted desire that blazed through him like a forge fire, the fury at his own response that quickly became obsession.
And Cadeyrn experiences me with equal intimacy—my fierce protection of Willow, my years hiding as a beta, the constant vigilance to avoid discovery. He feels my pride in my blacksmith's strength, the satisfaction I find in bending stubborn metal to my will. Most intimate of all, he experiences my contradictory response to him—the attraction I've fought since first seeing him, the thrill of being hunted by something so powerful, the shame those feelings ignite in me.
As he continues to pump endless waves of seed into me, his knot pulsing with each release, the cillae from the silver bracelet spread across both our bodies in matching designs. They meet over our hearts, forming an intricate pattern that glows with blue-white light in perfect synchronization with our shared heartbeat.
The blackthorn tree's red sap drips onto our joined bodies, burning like liquid fire where it touches skin before sinking beneath the surface. It leaves no visible mark, but I feel it traveling through my veins, marking me from within with ancient magic.
Carefully, mindful of the knot binding us together, Cadeyrn lowers us to the ground. He cradles me in his lap, my back against his chest, his arms wrapped around me in a hold that's both possessive and strangely protective. I can feel his heart thundering against my spine, its rhythm perfectly matched to my own.