Page 30 of Wolf of the Storm
"There is a transfer of my DNA through the bite. My wolf's essence mixing with yours." I pause, knowing this next partwill change everything. "For humans, it means transformation. You'd become a shifter."
Her eyes widen, and the scent of her fear spikes sharp in the air. "I'd turn into a wolf?"
"Eventually, yes. If your body accepts the change—and with fated mates, it almost always does. Wolf DNA is strong enough to override human genetics." I keep my distance even though every instinct screams to close the gap between us. "You'd be able to shift, run with the pack. Gain our strength, our healing, our lifespan."
She takes a step back. "But you're talking about fundamentally changing what I am."
"Yes. Eliza." Her name is a growl, and she stops mid-sentence, her eyes widening slightly.
"Oh." She blinks, and I watch realization dawn across her features. Through the bond, her curiosity transmutes into something else—awareness, heat, nervousness that makes my pulse spike. "Oh. The bond. You're feeling what I'm feeling."
Not completely. Not yet. But enough. Enough to know that beneath all those questions, beneath that sharp journalistic mind always chasing the truth, she wants this as much as I do.
"I need...” I grip the edge of the counter hard enough that I hear the granite crack slightly. "I need you to understand what you're choosing if we do this."
She takes another step closer, and it takes everything in me not to vault over the counter and close the distance. "I'm listening."
"The claiming bite is permanent," I force out, each word a battle. "It will mark you as mine to every supernatural creature who sees it. But more than that—it will change you. My DNA will overwrite yours. You'll become shifter. You'll be Pack, and eventually, you'll shift. You'll be pulled into our politics, our wars, our world. There's no going back from it."
"I understand." Her voice is steady, sure. She takes another step, and now she's at the edge of the counter, only feet away from me.
"You don't." I shake my head, trying to make her see reason even as the wolf howls in protest. "You can't. You're human. You have a career exposing the truth, a normal life. I'm offering you danger, violence, a world where you'll always be at risk because you're mine. Enemies will use you to get to me. You'll be a target."
"Declan." She says my name softly, and it's my undoing. "Do you want me?"
The question is so simple, so direct, and the answer tears out of me before I can stop it. "More than I want my next breath."
"Then stop trying to talk me out of it." She moves around the counter, and I should back away, should maintain distance, but I'm rooted to the spot as she approaches. "I've spent my entire career chasing dangerous stories, asking questions people don't want answered, going places I shouldn't go. Maybe this is reckless. Maybe I should be terrified." She's close enough to touch now, close enough that the heat radiating off her skin makes my control splinter. Through the bond, I feel her resolve, fierce and unshakeable. "But I'm not. I'm choosing this. I'm choosing you."
"You need to be sure." My hands are shaking with the effort of keeping them at my sides. "Once I claim you, once the bond is complete, there's no...”
Her lips crash against mine with bruising force. She rises on her toes, both hands fisting in my shirt hard enough that I hear fabric strain. She yanks me down to her level, eliminating the distance between us with single-minded determination. The kiss is all heat and demand—no hesitation, no second-guessing, just raw want that mirrors the hunger clawing through my chest.
For one stunned heartbeat, my brain short-circuits. She kissed me. My mate kissed me first.
Then my wolf explodes to the surface. The iron control I've been maintaining—the careful distance, the measured responses, the constant vigilance—shatters like glass.
I haul her against me, eliminating every inch of space between us. One hand drives into her hair, fingers tangling in the silky strands, angling her head exactly where I want it. My other hand clamps on her hip, fingers digging into the soft flesh hard enough that I know I'll leave bruises—five perfect finger-shaped marks that will brand her as mine even before the claiming bite.
She gasps against my mouth, and the sound vibrates straight through my chest. Not fear. Not pain. Pure, undiluted need that tastes like lightning on my tongue. The incomplete bond thrums between us, carrying the spike of her desire, the way her pulse is hammering, the heat flooding through her body.
I tilt her head back further, my tongue sweeping past her lips to claim her mouth properly. She doesn't yield—she surges forward, her tongue sliding against mine in a way that's more battle than surrender. The slick heat of her mouth, the little sounds she makes when I bite her lower lip, the way her nails dig into my shoulders hard enough to draw blood through my shirt—it all feeds the fire burning through my veins.
A growl rumbles up from deep in my chest, rough and possessive and barely human.
Mine. The word echoes through every cell in my body.
I break the kiss only long enough to lift her. "Bedroom," I manage, and she nods, her fingers already working at the buttons of my shirt.
"Yes," she breathes against my mouth, and that single word of consent snaps the last thread of my restraint.
My body moves before conscious thought catches up. I sweep her legs out from under her, one arm banding around her waist,the other cradling her head against my chest. Her startled laugh vibrates against my sternum as I stride through the doorway, down the hall, reflexes carrying me faster than most humans could track. The world blurs at the edges—furniture, doorways, shadows—but she stays in perfect focus. The weight of her in my arms. The vanilla scent of her hair. The rapid flutter of her pulse against my palm.
My bedroom door hits the wall and then slams shut with a bang I'll regret later. Right now, nothing matters except getting her to the bed, getting these clothes off, claiming what's mine.
I lower her to the mattress, and the wolf snarls at me to just take, to pin her down and mark her now. But my hands shake as I ease her onto the navy sheets, as I bracket her body with my arms, hovering over her instead of crushing her beneath my weight. Gentle. I need to be gentle, even though every muscle in my body is locked tight with the effort of holding back, even though my breathing is ragged and my control is hanging by a thread.
"Last chance," I tell her, even as my hands find the hem of her shirt. "Tell me to stop and I will."
