Page 14 of Shattered & Returned

His Winter Eyes

My right eye twitched a warning and my left earlobe burned with promise. Danger and desire warred under my skin.

The dream rushed back: his mouth between my thighs, his roar as the water swallowed me. Now here he stood in flesh and fury.

Light and shadow carved him into existence—broad shoulders straining against a dark shirt. Rolled sleeves revealed forearms corded with muscle, golden-brown skin glinting with barely leashed power. Every inch of him was weapon and temptation fused together.

My breath shallowed. The academy’s energy thrummed through me, sharpening my senses until I couldtastethecourtyard’s collective hunger. Female students swayed subtly, lips parted, their arousal a thick perfume in the air.

They couldn’t help it, just as I couldn’t help it.

His scent of burning sandalwood and primal male drowned us all out. His mouth was the cruelest contradiction: that brutal face softened by lips made for sin. My own tingled in remembered pleasure.

And then?—

He looked throughthe adoring crowd.

Past their held breaths.

Straight into me.

A shiver cascaded down my spine, pooling hot and heavy at the base. Thirty yards separated us, yet his attention seared like a brand.

Then, just for a heartbeat, his stone mask cracked. Something raw and wounded flashed in those green depths before vanishing. My pulse stuttered.Did he remember? Did he feel this too?

I waited for him to look away, but his piercing gaze locked on me as if no one else existed. As if we were the only two souls left in creation.

The air turned to syrup in my lungs. Ancient emotions, thick as blood, rose from some buried place inside me. My vision darkened at the edges, heartbeat thundering in my ears.

My hand spasmed toward my pocket. The inhaler waited, but using it now would brand me as weak. Prey.

Not here. Not before him.

I dug my nails into my palms, the pain grounding me. The darkness behind my eyelids swam with fragmented images:

his mouth on my skin,

his roar in my ears,

the icy water swallowing me.

When I opened my eyes, he still watched.

A collective gasp rippled through my kidnappers. They stared between us like witnesses to some mythical collision.

Heat flooded me, settling low and heavy. The thin nightgown clung to my damp skin, the rough robe chafing my peaked nipples. Worse—the slick evidence of my arousal trickled down my inner thighs. I squeezed my legs together, but the movement only drew attention.

Every head swiveled toward me, following their dark god’s rapt attention.

Mortification scalded my cheeks. This was their fault. These kidnappers who’d dragged me here barefoot and half-dressed. Now I stood exposed before a courtyard of wolves.

The trio moved as one, forming a living barricade between me and the gawking crowd. As if answering my silent plea, the sky darkened, clouds boiling overhead like a vengeful god’s wrath. Thunder growled in the distance, closer with each heartbeat, until a spear of black lightning struck the stairs mere inches from the dark stranger’s boots.

The impact should have shattered stone. Should have sent him reeling.

He didn’t flinch.

The violent wind tousled his raven hair, the strands falling across his forehead like a crown of shadows. His features sharpened—cheekbones cut from marble, jawline like honed steel, those winter-green eyes freezing into glacial ice. Power radiated from him in visible waves, distorting the air like a heat haze.

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