“Ginny!” Jonas boomed. “No.”
Yes.
Surprise was on her side or she would have been toast.
Her fist knocked the stake free from the king’s hand and it clattered to the ground, at her feet. The king stared at Ginny in shock for a millisecond, before springing forward—propelling himself right into the stake she’d picked up at an unfathomable pace and now held in her fist. Air left his open mouth like a deflating ball, his eyes ticking to Jonas, holding, and he became nothing but embers, then ash.
The remaining members of the High Order screamed, the sound echoing off the hall’s high ceiling. Ginny fell like a stone, her final reserve of energy expended.
No more.
She couldn’t stay another second. Numbness stole through her and she collapsed onto her back in a fit of trembling.
Jonas’s frenzied expression filled the space above her. “Elias, give me your knife.”
“What are you going to do?”
Distantly, Ginny sensed the exchange taking place. “What my gut tells me,” Jonas said raggedly. “I have no choice. I refuse to walk this earth without her.”
She cracked a single eye in time to watch Elias blade slash diagonally across Jonas’s wrist, blood welling in the cut—and something inside her swelled eagerly. He held the wound above her mouth, letting several droplets fall before bringing it flush to her lips. A drop slid down her throat and Ginny’s back arched off the floor. A moment ago, her hands were devoid of strength, but they clung to Jonas’s wrist now, holding his hand immobile while more and more blood dripped into her mouth.
Her heart scrambled, pumping harder and…louder than she could ever remember, as if she was listening to an ultrasound at full volume.
The taste was paradise.
It was partially her own blood, yes, but it carried Jonas, too. Somehow her taste buds could pick out the individual molecules that held his essence and she savored them most of all, moaning as they slid down her throat.
“That’s it. Come back to me, love.” Tears clogged his tone. “Ginny, please.”
Her eyelids fluttered down and she dropped into the scene from her recurring dream, but the perspective changed. She was now Jonas standing beneath the tree, watching herself approach. A different version of herself, but herself nonetheless. The bone-deep yearning, the hunger, the obsession was Jonas’s. All for her. She shook in the face of it.
Next she saw herself in the embalming room, dressed in her green plaid dress and white coat. Thirst wrapped around her throat and squeezed, inner willpower wrestling back the urge to pounce, to subdue and conquer. Claim. Had he really been fighting such ferocious urges in her presence? How had he managed it all this time?
Relentless had been his ache. Not touching her had been nearly unbearable for him. Leaving her before sunrise had left him bereft, over and over again, to the point of despair. That despair infiltrated her now and she understood it.
Now she was living his reality, her human love colliding with something elemental, something animal and irreversible. Exploding.
She let go of Jonas’s wrist, turning boneless on the floor, hands flopped out at her sides, but she had to reassure him. Craved his easement so much that she smiled. “Oh, thank God,” he said, falling forward to writhe his forehead on her belly. “I almost lost you. I almost fucking lost you.”
You didn’t, she wanted to whisper, but couldn’t locate her vocal abilities.
“Listen to her heart. It never fully stopped.” Jonas lifted his head, sounding awed. “That means…I’m…her mate, too. The bond was already in place. Even when she was still human?”
“That must be why she felt your pain.”
“We can sustain each other,” Jonas whispered.
“She won’t have to be woken by her mate,” Elias said, crouching down beside his friend. “Her heart never slept.”
Jonas leaned down and kissed her mouth softly. “I’ll never let it go silent.”
Ginny looked up into the eyes of the man he loved, noticing four separate shades of green for the first time. His breaths caressed her eardrums. She could feel the bow of his muscles through two sets of clothes, hear the friction of clothing on his skin—and she had to spear her fingers into the carpet to keep from pulling Jonas down on top of her, craving the press of his body, his mouth on hers.
Jonas’s mouth curved against hers. “Still going to have a problem being calm, are we?”
Oh Lord, the sound of his voice. It unwrapped her like a present. “I was led to believe we wouldn’t need to be…calm anymore.”
The tips of their tongues met on the barest stroke. “I’m really looking forward to that.”
“Me too.” A throb landed in her throat. “I’m sorry…about Clarence. He was your father, in a way—”
He cut her off with an incredulous sound, his eyes whipping with intensity. “I have need of you and no one else.” Jonas’s hands shook as he cupped her face. “Some things a man doesn’t get over so easy,” he said, quoting The Quiet Man and making her heart soar. “Loving you is one of them. I will do it eternally, Ginny. But if you ever put yourself in danger again—”