Chapter 2 Collar And Claim

• Blood. His blood, on my tongue, and I didn't know when that had happened.
• "Don't," Riven said, his hand still locked at my throat, his voice rough in a way it hadn't been ten seconds ago. "Don't say anything."
• "What did you do to me."
• "I don't know." He said it like the words cost him something. His grip loosened, and the collar finally clicked shut around my neck, cold and final, while the fire under his fingers kept burning like it had never heard the word cold in its life. "Get him up."
• Hands pulled me to my feet. My legs barely held.
• They marched me out of the hall through a back corridor, past wolves who wouldn't meet my eyes now, past a woman who pressed a wet cloth into someone else's hands and murmured "clean him before the alpha comes" like I was livestock being readied for market. Maybe I was.
• The chamber they brought me to was bigger than the whole den I'd grown up in. Stone walls, a fire already lit, a bed that could have slept six. Two women scrubbed the soot and blood from my skin without asking permission, working fast, silent, while I stood there and let them because fighting would have cost strength I didn't have left to spend.
• "Hold still," one of them muttered when I flinched from the water.
• "Where is he."
• "Coming." She wouldn't look at me either. "Smells like Ashgrove?" She rubbed something into my shoulder that stung, sharp and floral, nothing like the smoke and pine I'd grown up under. "Now you smell like Blackthorn."
• "I will never smell like Blackthorn."
• "That's not up to you anymore." The second woman spoke for the first time, older, tired-looking, like she'd done this before for someone else and hadn't liked it then either. "Nothing about you is up to you anymore. Best you learn that fast. Easier that way."
• "Is that supposed to be kindness?"
• "It's supposed to keep you alive." She dried her hands on her apron and looked at me properly for the first time, something almost like pity crossing her face before she smoothed it away. "The last omega he brought in here didn't listen. Didn't end well for either of them."
• "There was another."
• "There's always another, until there isn't." She turned for the door. "Don't fight him tonight. Whatever you're planning, tonight isn't the night for it."
• "I don't take orders from Blackthorn staff."
• "No," she agreed, "you don't. You'll take them from him instead, one way or another, before this night is through." She didn't wait for my answer. She just finished, gathered her things, and left with the other woman so fast the door barely had time to shut behind them.
• I was alone for exactly four minutes. I counted them.
• Then the door opened again, and Riven filled it.
• He'd changed, shirt gone, and I could see now what the war had actually cost him, scars layered over scars, nothing like the clean untouched look he'd worn in that hall. He shut the door behind him and the sound of it locking was the loudest thing I'd ever heard.
• "You're shaking," he said.
• "I'm furious."
• "You're shaking," he said again, closer now, "and it isn't only rage. You feel it too."
• "I don't feel anything for you."
• "Liar." He said it almost gently, which was worse than if he'd shouted it. He crossed the room and I backed until the bed stopped me, and he kept coming until there was nowhere left for either of us to go. "I can smell it on you, Silas. Same as you can smell it on me."
• "Get away from me."
• "I can't." His hand came up to my jaw, and where his skin touched mine the fire from the hall came roaring back, worse this time, drowning out every other feeling in my body until there was only him, only heat, only the low sound he made in his chest that wasn't a growl and wasn't a groan but something caught between the two. "I've tried. Believe me. I've been trying since the second I put that collar on you."
• "Then keep trying."
• "I don't want to anymore."
• "You murdered my family tonight." I made myself say it, made myself hold onto it, because it was the only weapon I had left in that room. "You think a bond changes that? You think my body wanting something means I forgive you for a single second of it?"
• "I'm not asking for forgiveness."
• "Then what are you asking for."
• "Nothing." His thumb dragged along my jaw, slow, almost reverent, completely at odds with the iron in his voice. "I'm not asking you anything, Silas. I'm telling you what's going to happen, same as I did in that hall. The only difference is now I know it's going to happen to me too."
• "That doesn't make it better."
• "I never said it would."
• He kissed me before I could answer, or maybe it wasn't a kiss, maybe it was closer to a claim already starting, teeth grazing my lower lip hard enough to warn. I shoved at his chest with both hands and he didn't move an inch, didn't even seem to notice, and God help me some traitor part of my body arched toward him instead of away.
• "Stop," I said against his mouth, and meant it, and hated that I had to force the word out.
• "I can't." He pinned my wrists above my head with one hand, easy, like I weighed nothing, and tilted my head to the side with the other. "The bond wants this. I want this. Fight me if you need to. I'll still finish it."
• "Riven…"
• "Say my name again."
• "Riven, don't."
• He bit down.
• Pain tore white-hot through my shoulder where his teeth broke skin, and underneath the pain came something else entirely, something that had no business existing between two people who hated each other, a pull so violent it bent my spine and dragged a sound out of me I didn't recognize as my own voice. His whole body shuddered against mine. I felt him fighting it, felt the war happening inside him same as the one happening inside me, his hips pressed hard against mine one second and his hand gentling against my hair the next, like he couldn't decide whether to devour me or hold me together.
• "Silas." My name came out of him broken, nothing like the bored certainty from the hall. "Silas, I can't…"
• He tore himself back before the bite finished sealing, staggering half a step away, breathing like he'd run for miles. Blood welled from the mark on my shoulder, not enough to be dangerous, more than enough to hurt, and Riven stood there staring at his own hands like they belonged to someone else.
• "That shouldn't be possible," he said, low, mostly to himself. "I don't stop. I never stop."
• "You didn't finish it," I said, and my voice came out strange, thick, wrecked. "Why."
• "I don't know."
• I touched my shoulder and my fingers came away red, and without thinking, without any reason I could name, I brought them to my mouth and tasted copper and something underneath it that wasn't mine. His blood, mixed with my own where the bite had broken through.
• And somewhere under the hatred I'd carried since the moment they dragged me out of my burning den, something shifted, quiet and terrible, rewriting itself into shape I didn't have a name for yet and didn't want.