Page 72 of Red Ruin

I grab her shoulders.

Suck the wound.

Fucking divine.

My Guide gasps.

Her silks weave inside me, making needle pricks, then smoothing over the pain.

Burst by burst she picks me apart and washes away the agony.

I should care about the duties and obligations that crackle in fragments at the edge of my consciousness, waiting to be pieced together and taken up one last time.

And yet?

This taste.

This soul.

Thiswoman.

Azrids don’t imprint.

It’s not possible for a Guide to be our match in both spirit and the flavor of their blood.

ButIris.

Now that she exists, why would I care for anything else?

“Iris.” I sigh the name that just returned. “You don’t understand what you are.”

“Remy? If you can talk, then?—”

“No.” I caress her throat. “I’ll show you.”

“It can wait. There’s a monster?—”

“Guide.” I lick my pulsing fangs. “Let me show you.”

CHAPTER19

IRIS

“Okay.Okay. Show me whatever you want.” I comb through Remy’s tangles, tingling from the danger in his tone.

This is Remington at his most deadly.

The one with enough vocabulary to drawl cryptically possessive bullshit, but not nearly enough self-awareness to realize his brain is stuck on airplane mode.

“But first? Help me clean this?” Before Remy can bite a straw-hole through my lip, I lift my wolf-mauled arm.

Offering my blood shifts the kind of danger that I’m in.

Remy’s shadows wrap lovingly around my gift. He licks me from wrist to elbow with the flat of his tongue.

“This flavor,” Remy purrs. “You were made for me.”

Nope.

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