Chapter 195: Good Girl. All Mine.

"Was I rejected by the flame?" she asked, already bracing for the answer.

The fear that the fire had looked at her and found her unworthy was stupid but it was still in the back of her mind and asking it out loud made her eyes burn before the answer arrived.

"What? No, why would you say that?" Derek pulled back to look at her, thumb catching a tear before it reached her jaw. Then he pressed his forehead to hers. "You were initiated. Were you worried about that?"

She gave a single nod.

"I was worried I wouldn’t be able to because of my wolf. I was worried they wouldn’t let me keep you as my mate," she hiccuped.

The word keep cracked her open. It was true. She had sat in that war room, heard the information, and remained calm. But it was weighing on her. The coma had shown her what losing him felt like and the feeling had been grief.

His eyes surged at that moment, and her stomach clenched because the last time she had seen gold eyes on a Thunderfang, she couldn’t remember what happened after.

But she had seen Alpha Thunderfang and Derek’s eyes both do this.

She realized he was upset because she was upset. She forgot that Derek did that sometimes.

"S-sorry." She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

Derek pulled her back against his chest and let her head settle into the crook of his shoulder, his hand moving slow up and down her spine.

"Don’t apologize to me, Nova. It worked. You’re Thunderfang. Did something happen to make you worry about that?"

"The fire at initiation hurt. I thought that maybe—" She stopped mid-word. "I didn’t understand."

"What do you mean it hurt?" Derek asked, voice back into that calm tone again.

"No. It felt like knives on my insides."

"That is dramatic."

Nova laughed against him once.

Her arms went around him and held on, tight. She had missed him so much that the simple fact of him being solid and real under her hands made her eyes burn all over again.

"I’m never leaving you again." His voice came out rough, like he’d read the thought straight off the inside of her skull. "I promise you that."

The promise landed on her like a hand pressing down on a wound she hadn’t realized was open. A week. He had been gone for a week. She had held his hand and begged him to come back and slept in a chair beside his bed and woken up with his name in her mouth and now he was here, solid, warm, his voice in her ear, and the relief was so violent it was indistinguishable from pain.

She pressed her face into his neck.

Then something registered, and she pulled back a little to look at him.

"Derek. Your skin. It’s healed."

"The gold did it," he answered.

"Oh." She looked down at the glowing water. "Why are we in the bath?"

"You were burning up." His thumb traced her cheekbone. "Astra’s at a council meeting. I needed to cool you down."

"Nova." Derek’s voice shifted, the lightness draining out of it. "There’s something I need to tell you."

She pulled back, worry carving itself across her face in an instant, and reached up to brush his hair back from his forehead.

He caught her hand before it finished the motion and pressed his lips to the inside of her wrist, slow, his eyes never once leaving hers.

She blushed, just now feeling fully naked.

"If you keep blushing like that," he said against the inside of her wrist, "we’re going to have a problem."

Then he pulled her into a kiss. The kiss was different from the ones before the coma. Those had been playful. Teasing. The kisses of a man who had time and knew it. This kiss was a man who had lost time and knew it. His mouth found hers with an urgency that tasted like fear and relief and the place where the two become the same thing.

She kissed him back, arms tightening around his neck as the water shifted around them. He broke away and dropped to the line of her throat, kissing his way down the wet skin, open-mouthed and unhurried.

One hand slid lower, smacked her ass under the water with a sharp, muffled sound, then gripped her hip and started moving her against him in slow, deliberate rolls.

"You’re mine. Every part of you. I own this. Mine. Say it."

"Yours."

He kissed down her throat, hands guiding her hips in those slow rolls. Then out of nowhere, he pushed in without warning.

"Derek!" Nova gasped, sharp and startled.

His eyes were part wolf. He groaned, pushing up into her again. Then again.

The stretch burned. Her whole body seized around the intrusion and the sound that came out of her was half pain, half something else entirely. She had never felt this before. It was new territory that she was not expecting.

It took a few more before he was fully buried, her body clenching tight around the unexpected stretch.

"Good girl. All. Fucking. Mine. No one else touches what’s mine."

The words traveled through her body faster than her brain could process them. She didn’t understand why hearing him say mine made her clench around him. She didn’t understand why the growl in his voice made her want to move. She had no frame of reference for any of this. She only knew that her body was responding to things her mind hadn’t caught up to and the gap between the two was filled with heat.

He started fucking her, gripping her ass and pulling her down onto him in fast, deep strokes while the water sloshed wildly around them.

"That’s my pussy. Take my cock. All of it. This cunt is mine. Say it."

"Yours."

His mouth dragged up to the curve of her neck, breath hot against wet skin. His fangs dropped, sharp points pressing in, and then he bit—sinking them deep into her. Nova jolted at the pierce.

The sharp sting flared into something hotter, a rush that ripped a broken groan out of her throat.

"Derek—"

The bite sent something electric through her bloodstream. Liquid heat flooded her from the puncture point outward, rolling through her chest, her stomach, her hips, pooling everywhere at once.

It felt familiar in a way that she couldn’t explain but new in every fiber of her body.

Her spine arched without her permission. Her hips moved without her instruction. Her body was responding to something ancient and chemical and completely beyond the jurisdiction of her conscious mind and the responding felt like surrendering.