Fated mates were rare. What they could do for each other was rarer.
Skin-to-skin contact was the cheat code for fast healing.
Nicholas’s father had taught him that once, though most healers would consider it fairy-tale nonsense. He was trusting faith, pure instinct, and the wolf currently screaming "clothes are a hate crime."
He released her neck and yanked his shirt over his head like the thing had personally wronged him, then moved to hers. His hands hesitated for half a second of pure ’this is happening’ before he yanked the whole fucking ensemble off, bralette included.
Then he saw her and he forgot how to breathe.
Heat punched straight to his groin. His cock thickened and lurched up, straining against the wet fabric like it was trying to escape prison. The head of him throbbed with every panicked heartbeat, borderline painful.
Not now.
He muttered it like a holy fucking prayer while his hands didn’t stop until they were both completely bare. Everything. Gone.
Then he yanked her flush to him. Zero gaps. Her breasts to his chest.
White lines lit up wherever skin met skin, throbbing in a rhythm that was their heartbeats desperately trying to match and failing because hers was barely there and his was pounding like a war drum and the gap between them was the gap between alive and almost.
His hips twitched forward once before he locked them in place, muscles shaking with the effort of not thrusting against her stomach.
"Hang on, baby," he said against her neck. "I’ll get you more."
He bit down again and released a second wave of venom.
It was working. He could feel the silver retreating through the matebond, each pocket of poison collapsing as his venom reached it and burned it clean.
Her wolf answered. Faint as hell. Flickering. But there. His wolf grabbed hers like a last-second catch of a falling body and the two locked together. Still in human form, yet he felt hers in his chest as solid as his own.
The tree above them groaned, roots shifting in the pool, bark glowing brighter as if the entire organism was aware that something sacred was happening in its water and was contributing.
Her heart steadied.
He felt it through their matebond and against his chest. The flutter that had been inconsistent and terrifying smoothed into something that resembled a rhythm. Weak. Irregular. But no longer declining.
He released her neck to check the progress and saw the dark veins had gotten the memo and started to pull back.
Then her eyes snapped open.
"Guinevere?"
She blinked at him but did not answer.

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