Just be fucking patient, he snarls at himself. You’re not the center of the fucking world. She is.

But it feels like torture when he returns to her after three days (and three hours and twenty minutes) away. Serena’s with Twinkles, waiting for Koen on the cabin’s porch, but sprints toward him before he even slows down the car. He’s terrified he’ll run her over, so he parks right in the middle of the driveway, gets out of the vehicle, and lets her softening body slam against his when she throws herself into his arms.

She stretches up for a kiss, two, a million, but she’s too little and maybe too eager and clearly hasn’t planned this out, so he has to pick her up and slide his hands down to squeeze her thighs as she wraps her legs around him.

“Can you,” she says between kisses, “never”— kiss— “leave again?” Kiss. “Like, ever?” Kiss.

The only response he can manage is a groan. He breathes her in, nose buried into the gland at the base of her neck. Yeah, of course he’ll never leave again. He’ll do her one better: they’ll stay in his cabin forever. Brick up all entrances. Sounds like a pretty fucking good deal.

He’d love to be a gentleman for once— carry her inside, give her the snacks he brought back from Human territory for her, ask how her week at work went, tell her that he missed her and— God, the banality of it sounds outrageously enticing. Problem is, it doesn’t go like that. Koen can rarely stay on task when it comes to Serena, which is his fault, his weakness, yeah, sure, but it doesn’t help that her scent is phenomenal, or that she no longer smells as intensely his as when he left. Not to mention, he apparently does require sex in quantities and frequencies that are . . . humbling. And he won’t be able to let go of her until he’s certain that she’s unharmed and whole, because that’s the bottom line: he doesn’t really trust the world to treat her right if he’s not around. She’s simply too beautiful.

Koen wishes he could help himself, but that’s not the case. She’s pliable in his arms, and the couch is enticingly horizontal, and at least he manages to kick the door shut behind him before laying her down and pulling at her shirt so hard that— “Fuck”— the neckline tears. He should be sorry, but now he has full access to her tits, and maybe the universe is a good, just place after all.

“I think,” he pants against her ear, ragged, “you should just start coming on these trips with me.” His hands are trembling. He wants her too much.

“I missed you,” she says instead of yes, licking the gland under his jaw, and he doesn’t bother telling her that he missed her back, because it feels so fucking redundant when he’s trying to inhale her.

“Serena,” he mouths against her temple. It really is terrible mate behavior, fucking his partner before even saying hello, but she’s squirming underneath him, and the friction is unfuckingbelievable, and he can’t control himself. Maybe she can’t, either, and that is when it happens.

The most life-changing event he’ll ever experience.

It almost feels like a miscalculation on her part. Because one moment she’s kissing and sucking his gland, and the next her teeth sink into the skin of his neck.

The pleasure is as stupefying as it is annihilating. He doesn’t come in his pants, but it’s a close thing. The only reason he’s able to stop himself is that the world grinds to a halt. For several seconds, it doesn’t spin. Koen and Serena stay like that, still, tethered by her bite, for long moments. And then . . .

Then she pulls away. She licks her lips, and he discovers that they are dark.

With his goddamn blood.

This time he does come a little bit.

For a few seconds, Serena’s eyes are full wolf. Then they transition back to human, still that beautiful, rich brown he fell for, and she’s with him once again, present, aware, and—

She blinks. “Holy shit. Did I . . . ?”

Yeah.

“Oh my God. I bit you?”

She did. She fucking did. Koen is inordinately proud of her. How deep her little teeth got. The sharp blades of her canines. It even hurt a little. Okay, not really, but he felt her seize the inside of his soul.

She owns him. It’s official.

“I’m so sorry. I— I didn’t mean to. I was just— I’ve been thinking about you and I . . . I’ve been having these dreams and— I got carried away. Your neck was right there and . . . Oh my God. Are you okay?” She seems highly alarmed. “Is it going to stick? Leave a scar?”

Nothing has ever given Koen more joy than being able to tell her, “Oh, yeah.”

“Are you sure?”

He doesn’t have much experience with it, but . . . it damn better. He hopes it’ll be twisted. In relief. Beautiful in its own ugly way. He hopes it’ll be a mess of thick, ropy lines that no one can pretend not to see. He’s hers. He always was, but now she has claimed him, and he’s going to rub it in everyone’s fucking face until they plead with him to stop, and even then, he will not. Instead, he’ll beg her for another one. On the wrist, maybe, so that he can look at it every second of every day. On both wrists. Why not? How many mating scars is too many? Frankly, whoever said that less is more was—

“I’m so sorry. I probably should have asked if— ”

A deep sound snaps out of his throat. No. There was no need for that. The thought is so ridiculous, he decides to focus on something else.

Like taking off her pants.

“Koen? Are you okay with me having done that?”

He’s dazed. Overwhelmed in the best possible away. He truly is not sure how to communicate to her that he’s never been harder, happier, and more certain of the existence of a benevolent God than he is right now. “Yeah,” he grunts.

“Okay. Good. I . . . Good.” There is some blood trickling down the column of his throat, because she butchered his gland. He feels her arch up to lick it, and—

Perfection. His mate is perfect. He’ll massacre whoever tries to take her from him, of course.

She smiles at him, and he smiles back as she asks, “Would it be okay if . . . ?”

He stops what he’s doing— trying to get inside her— and looks up. Waits for her request, whatever it may be, even though he already knows that his answer is going to be yes. It’s not like he’s ever going to deny her anything. He has tried and always, always failed. “Yeah?”

“If you . . .” She’s flushing a little. Her pretty pink cheeks— such a weird fucking color, and yet so enchanting.

“What?”

“Um, do you maybe want to bite me, too?”

That’s when Koen passes out for a minute. At least, he thinks so. His vision blacks out, and sound recedes. He’s suspended in nothing. Then, when he comes to, she’s still soft underneath him, and clearly in the middle of a little speech.

“. . . did it to you, so it would be only, you know, fair. And you said, a few weeks ago, that you wanted to bite me, too . . .” The cheeks— now that he’s regained his eyesight, he can tell that they’re even pinker. He thinks that he might come again just from looking at them.

And then the true meaning of her words sinks in.

“You asked me to bite you,” he rasps out.

She nods quickly.

“The mating bite.”

More nodding.

“Mine.”

Nod.

“On you.”

“You never really brought it up again. I was wondering if it was something I did, or— ”

“I was fucking— ” A deep, growly, unspeakable sound rises from deep in his chest. Koen had not known he was capable of that. “I was giving you space.”

She frowns. “What?”

“I was being a patient, considerate, respectful, non-intrusive, accommodating mate. I was trying to— ”

“Koen, you are the most intrusive mate ever. You never stop staring at me when we’re in the same room, you wake me up to have sex in the middle of the night, you keep tearing my clothes, and you want to be with me every second you’re not gone on pack business. You’re not really the space-giving kind of partner, and— ”