Chapter 242: Fall Fast, Hard, & Completely
Dexmon waited for the rage. For the territorial, possessive fury that should have torn through him at the sight of another man touching the woman who wore Serena’s face.
He waited for his wolf to surge, for his fists to clench, for the primal rejection that every mated male carried like a loaded weapon.
It didn’t come.
What came instead was an ache so deep it didn’t have a name. He could feel Natalia through the matebond, even in a memory, even across ten thousand years, and what he felt was a woman being put back together by hands that knew exactly where she was broken.
Ronan touched Natalia the way Dexmon touched Serena. The same reverence. The same barely contained hunger held on a leash so tight it trembled. The same hands that could break a man’s jaw cradling her face like she was the most fragile and most important thing in any world he’d ever stood in.
Dexmon’s throat tightened.
Through the matebond, he felt relief. Safety. The specific, bone-deep release of a woman who had been holding herself rigid and was finally being held by someone who wouldn’t let go. Her pleasure moved through him like warm water, and Dexmon closed his eyes because it wasn’t his to feel but he couldn’t shut it out, and the truth was he didn’t want to.
She was his, in another life, in another name, and the man giving her this was Finnick Shadowclaw, and Dexmon could not bring himself to feel anything but gratitude.
Then Ronan finished.
Fast. Embarrassingly, catastrophically, almost-immediately fast. His whole body locked, his breath punched out of him like he’d been hit, and his forehead dropped against Natalia’s shoulder with a sound that was half groan and half disbelief.
Dexmon laughed, his chest shook with it. He knew that feeling. The first time with Serena, he had lasted roughly the same amount of time.
Ronan was frozen against Natalia’s shoulder, breathing hard, clearly running through the same internal crisis Dexmon had run through in his own first time. The silent, screaming negotiation between a man’s pride and a man’s body, and the body winning by a landslide.
Because of course. Of course he lost control. Of course it happened the same way. They were the same soul touching the same soul, and the result was always going to be the same beautiful, humiliating disaster.
Natalia’s hand came up to the back of Ronan’s head. Her fingers threaded through his hair. She held him against her shoulder and her breathing was steady and her heartbeat was calm and through the matebond Dexmon felt something from her that made his eyes burn.
She didn’t care how long it lasted or how it looked. She was holding the man who had waited for her, who had burned alive in silence for months, who had handed her to his brother and smiled through it, and he was finally hers and she was finally his and the rest of it was irrelevant.
Dexmon recognized that feeling too. Serena had held him the same way. Same fingers in his hair. Same steady heartbeat. Same quiet, devastating patience that said I have you and nothing else matters.
Then Ronan’s wolf surged.
Dexmon saw it happen in real time. The gold flooding his irises, the jaw tightening, the moment where instinct overwhelmed intention and the man disappeared into the animal. Ronan’s mouth found the junction of her neck and shoulder and his teeth sank in before his brain caught up.
Natalia gasped. Her back arched. Her fingers tightened in his hair. The matebond between them sealed with a force that Dexmon felt from across ten thousand years, a lock clicking into place that could never be undone.
Dexmon stood in the echo of the memory and rubbed both hands down his face, pressing his palms against his eyes until he saw light.
He had just watched Finnick Shadowclaw, in another body, in another life, make love to Serena Frostborne, in another body, in another life. And he had felt her pleasure through a matebond that transcended timelines. And the man had lasted two seconds and then accidentally marked her, which was exactly what Dexmon had done, in the same order, with the same level of control, which was none.
He wanted to laugh. He wanted to cry. He wanted to find Fin and tell him, because Fin would understand, and understanding was the only currency that mattered in a situation this absurd.
Same devastating, humbling, complete surrender to a bond that didn’t care about timing or pride or the carefully constructed walls a man builds to convince himself he’s in control.
Ronan had fallen the same way Dexmon fell. Fast. Hard. Without grace. And the woman underneath him had caught him the same way Serena caught Dexmon. With patience. With her hands in his hair. With a silence that said more than any words could have.
Ten thousand years apart and nothing had changed. The souls recognized each other. The bodies followed. And the men, in both lives, were left breathless and marked and completely, irrevocably undone.
✦✦✦
The memories kept coming. Faster now, less forgiving.
Asher’s wolf refused to mark Odette.
It was absence. Every time the instinct should have surged, should have compelled him to bite down and claim, there was silence. A door that should have been open, sealed shut, with no handle on his side.
Odette waited. She was patient about it initially, then less so, then visibly frustrated in a way she hid behind scheduled intimacy and reorganized furniture.
The love didn’t exist. This was a transactional relationship.
They both understood.
✦✦✦
Asher’s bedroom situation was worse.
Dexmon watched himself with the horror of a man observing his own autopsy.
Asher was on top of Odette. Her legs were wrapped around him. Every physical element was in place. Technically, anatomically, environmentally, all systems should have been operational.
They were emphatically, catastrophically, not operational.
Asher’s face cycled through concentration, frustration, and the specific brand of masculine panic that occurs when a man’s body refuses to cooperate with a situation his body should have been built for.
He shifted positions. He adjusted angles. He thought about, well, anything that might help. He thought very hard. He thought so hard a vein appeared in his forehead.
Nothing.
Odette, beneath him, was doing her best. Which made it worse, because she was genuinely trying, and her trying made him feel guilty, and his guilt made the situation more impossible, and the impossibility made him try harder, and the trying harder made everything tighter, and the tightening made everything softer, and the softening was now reaching a point of medical concern.
"It’s fine," Odette said, her voice carefully neutral.
"It’s fine," the younger Asher confirmed, in the tone of a man who was very much aware that nothing about this was fine.
He rolled off her. Lay flat on his back. Stared at the ceiling with the expression of a general who had just lost a battle to his own infantry.
"Do you want me to—" Odette began.
"No."
"I could—"
"No."
"There’s a technique—"
"Odette. I need a minute."
She gave him the minute. He used it to contemplate the structural integrity of the ceiling.
This was the third time in a row.
The first time, he’d blamed exhaustion. The second time, he’d blamed the wine. The third time, the excuses ran out and left him alone in a bed with a woman his body refused to acknowledge and a wolf who had gone so quiet it felt like sharing a skull with an empty room.
The current Dexmon, watching this, covered his face with both hands. He was watching himself fail to perform and he would have paid considerable sums to avoid this one.
Odette turned onto her side, facing away from him.
"You’re a prince, Asher. If Natalia is what you need then send for her. You finish in me instead of her. I’ll play along. Order her to keep her mouth shut about it. She can’t refuse a royal command. Problem solved."
Asher turned and looked at the back of his wife’s head. The expression on his face was the quiet, complete recognition of exactly who he was lying next to.
The room went cold. He got out of bed, dressed in the dark, and left without a word.
