She slaps my hand away. “Enough, I get it.”

“Every demigod in this city is looking at you like you’re wearing a sign that says ‘breed me.’”

“I said I didn’t know. It’s not like you gave me a lecture in Scillarian fuck symbols when I found out about Aethertide just yesterday.”

“Quiet, Devaliant.”

I ghost my knuckles down the delicate notches of her spine. Lingering in the divots above the lush curve of her ass. She shivers as I follow one of the chains down between her breasts, watching gooseflesh rise in the wake of my touch.

“Devla svaust,” I groan. “You have three little glyphs right between your tits that tell every male in Caelestis that you want someone to dominate you.”

“Then stop looking there. My face is up here.”

“Your face is behind a veil, you’re barely dressed, and you’re covered in symbols that are making me insane. Which part should I be looking at?”

She makes an annoyed sound. “Listen. The word Rhosyn—I remembered it from an old book in my father’s study. It mentioned a connection to Caelestis, and—”

I can’t take it anymore. I shove up the veil just enough to bare her throat and sink my teeth into her pulse point to shut her up. Because I don’t care about the book right now. I don’t care about rational thought. I don’t care about trying to justify this absolute mess of an excursion. Not when every inch of paint on her skin is screaming at me to shove her down, take her, make her mine. Kill anyone who even sees her with these symbols boldly declaring how she wants it.

I told her to stop talking.

She tastes like starlight. Like oblivion. Like everything I’ve ever wanted to corrupt. My sanity crumbles, and all I can think about is spreading her open, and licking into her until she screams my name to the sky—

Sharp nails rake down my nape, digging in as she shudders. Her breaths are fast and shallow. In the space between each one, my control unravels a little more.

“Wolf.” She pants as I nibble another mark into her skin. “You need to focus.”

“Oh, I’m focused.” There’s a laugh somewhere in my voice, but it’s a jagged, mirthless thing. “I’m so very, very fucking focused. So focused I can’t see straight.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know what you meant. You’re thinking, and it’s by far your worst quality.” I push my thigh between hers, biting back a groan when she rocks against me. “I’m not interested in thinking right now. Not when you smell like this. Not when you feel like this.” My lips brush her ear. “The symbol on your thigh says you want to be taken from behind. Would you like that?”

Her breath catches.

I drag the veil over her lips and crush my mouth to hers, swallowing her surprised gasp. The taste of her obliterates thought, narrowing everything down to the press of her body, the addictive sweep of her tongue.

“Is this just rut?” she whispers against my lips. “Would you care if it were Arcadia painted in these symbols?”

Arcadia? I yank back. “Why the fuck would I care about Arcadia right now?”

“Because you’ve had her every Aethertide. That’s what she said, right?”

I set my hand on the wall beside her head. “Would it get you to stop asking stupid questions if I made you come so hard that you forgot how to speak? Is that what I have to do? Should I tell you what every symbol on your body means and how many ways they’re telling me to defile you?”

Her fingers curl into my shirt in response, and the sweet scent of her arousal blooms. Damn me. I take her mouth again, rougher this time, biting down until she lets out a helpless whimper. Her hips grind into mine, chasing friction.

I wrench away with a shuddering breath.

Control. Control. Just a little longer.

“We’re leaving. Now.” My voice comes out low and rough as I straighten her veil. “Because if we don’t take off in the next few minutes, I’m going to eat that pussy in public, and I need to get you somewhere safe. Don’t leave my side.”

She gives a sharp nod. Smart girl.

The Devaliant presses close as we navigate through the crowd. I clutch her hand tightly, terrified of losing her in the sea of bodies. More than a few demis give her appreciative glances as we pass, and I crush her against me to mask her human scent with mine.

“Eyes front, asshole,” I snarl at a leering male.

His gaze darts between my gore-streaked hand and thunderous expression before he blanches.

More irritated hisses follow us through the plaza, but no one’s stupid enough to get in the Wolf’s business over the woman at his side or the demi he just incinerated. Not when he’s clearly in the grip of Aethertide’s madness.

“Next time, just ask me to paint you instead,” I mutter to the Devaliant. “At least then you’d be wearing my marks instead of the fuck-buffet menu Amara smeared all over you. You’d be covered in touch her and die symbols in every language.”

“But you’re single,” she says, because she lives to irritate me at every turn. “Isn’t that why Aethertide affects you like this? That’s what you said yesterday.”

There was peace in my life before she blundered her way into it. I slept. I functioned. I had just enough sanity to get through the day without murdering everyone who glanced at me wrong. And now look at me. I’m a barely functional wreck with a perpetual hard-on and a craving for the very last pussy in two realms that I should want.

I shoot her a glare. “If you don’t stop moving that bratty mouth, I’ll gag it with my dick.”

Amara finds us at the edge of the square, falling into step as I haul the Devaliant toward a deserted alley. And it’s only centuries of iron discipline that keep me from shaking the ever-loving shit out of her.

“You,” I snap, jabbing a finger in Amara’s direction. “When my higher brain functions crawl out of whatever rut-induced hellscape they’ve fucked off to? Oh, you and I are gonna have words.”

“Listen,” she starts, hands raised. “She said she wanted to help about Rhosyn.”

I bare my teeth, a snarl building in my chest. “You painted what’s mine in sex instructions for other gods to see.”

Her eyebrows shoot up at the words what’s mine, and if I were even slightly more sane, I’d be backtracking. I’d be making denials. I wouldn’t be saying stupid things. But the fever is pounding through my head, insisting those symbols are for me, and everyone who’s seen them needs to have their eyes removed.

“She needed to look like everyone else,” Amara insists, because she clearly has a death wish. “I gave her the most common ones.”

“She could have been discovered. She could have died. So shut up while I’m still letting you breathe.”

Amara’s jaw tightens, but she’s smart enough not to push. She knows exactly how close to feral I am right now.

She turns to the Devaliant instead. “Those demis didn’t know anything useful about your sister, so I’ll go to Hellevig myself and find out what’s happening. I’ll come back the morning after Aethertide passes. I can take you to my place in the meantime until the Wolf’s… situation stabilizes.”

And it’s exactly the wrong thing to say because it trips some primal switch in my brain. I snake an arm around the Devaliant to pull her more firmly against my side. A growl builds in my throat.

Mine. Stays with me.

“Wolf.” The Devaliant’s voice is soft. Breathless. “I’m staying. It’s okay.”

I shudder. Something cracks open in my chest at her words. A mortifying sound, close to a purr, rumbles through me as I nuzzle into her, breathing her in. Setting my mouth right over the symbol at her neck for mine.

“If there is a single mark on her she doesn’t beg for…” Amara lets the threat dangle.

I’m already spreading my wings. “Yeah, I got it.”

Then we’re airborne, the city falling away until it’s nothing but a blur of light far below.