“Claim me, damn it!” Now I wasn’t asking. I needed him inside me. I needed his mark. Needed his seed.

It wasn’t a life-or-death situation, but it sure felt like it.

“No,” he repeated once more.

I snarled my frustration and banged my fists against the marble tombstone so hard the stone fractured beneath my belly. “If you won’t claim me, then you don’t deserve me. I’m not your fucking blood whore like Lexi. I’m your mate. And you’re mine. So finish sealing the bond already.”

He leaned in closer, his muscle-laced physique draping over my soft curves. His massive fingers threaded through the hair at my nape and fisted them. He arched my head back until my torso lifted from the tombstone and whispered in my ear, “Oh, but you are my blood whore, Princess. And how I’d fucking love to bite you right now.”

“Then do it!”

“I will…” His tone dropped two octaves, underscored by something that made a shiver skip up my spine. “If you let me remove the birth control from you right now and give me your womb like you promised.”

“I–I—” I balked. “I promised you my womb if you brought me Dagon’s heart.”

“Yeah, and you know as well as I do that Dagon is probably dead now that your father is wearing Dagon and his powers like a fucking suit. So the deal is off. This is the new deal. Take it or leave it.”

Damn him.

The human part of me pushed against my mind, trying to regain control, but I shoved her back down. I knew what that side of me was getting so hung up on. She was torn. Only one prince could breed us at a time. Only one could be the first. Sterling had believed he wasn’t capable of having children. After so many years of suffering and having lost so much, didn’t he deserve to be a father?

On the other hand, Vincent was a dark fae. Their people lived to feed and breed. The greatest way to honor their parents was to continue the family line.

I understood all the sappy sentimentality. Me? This side of myself? She was just a bundle of instincts. Screw, feed, and breed, just like Feral’s primary programming. And Feral was here, inside me, withholding something I so desperately wanted. And I could have it, so long as I uttered the single syllable word that was, “Yes.”

He stilled for a moment as if he hadn’t heard me right. “Say it again.”

“Yes,” I huffed. “Take it out. Breed me.”

“Say it so you can’t get pissed at me for doing this later. Beg me.”

“Please. Fucking, please! Rip out the implant.”

A low satisfied growl curled up from his throat and wrapped around my neck like an invisible rope. I choked, trying to suck in air as my whole body bucked against him the moment his deadly talon scraped over the flesh of my arm.

Right where my implant rested.

With an excruciating pace, his talon cut into my skin and dipped inside my arm. I thrashed and expelled a shrill scream, all while I gripped the edge of the marble so hard that it crumbled beneath my fingers.

It felt like he’d been digging around for the implant for ages when I knew it had been a matter of seconds. Then, he plucked it out as if it had been nothing but a splinter.

The moment it left my body, a powerful wave of pheromones leaked from the place where we were connected. Just like that, my body broke out into a full-on heat state.

I could feel the male inside me, tensing and twitching and reacting to my call down to my very center. The veins wrapping his shaft throbbed. My walls grew slicker when a wave of pre-cum oozed from his tip.

There was a tense moment of complete silence—the calm before the storm. Then he began to ram into me with a series of thrusts that brought stars to my eyes.

I thought Vincent would make good on his deal and bite into me the moment the implant was out.

He didn’t.

He kept pumping into me, colliding, crashing and breaking me apart with every thrust. When his cock seized, and I felt his release coming, I choked on a tiny, “No.”

I tried to get away but couldn’t. I was pinned between a slab of marble and slabs of muscle.

My brain protested, but my traitorous body was here for it, soaking up every depraved second.

The fae came apart at the same moment I did, which made my anger confusing as unbridled euphoria swept me to the stars and then back down, all in a moment.