Chapter 384 Spanked Mid-Lesson & Still Blushing

SHADOWCLAW

Serena stirred.

The first thing she registered was warmth. The specific, encompassing warmth of a chest she knew by temperature and texture, rising and falling beneath her cheek in a rhythm that was steady and unhurried.

Fin’s lips pressed against her hair. Then her temple. Then the corner of her forehead, following the line where her white hair met her skin, the kind of slow, deliberate attention that Finnick Shadowclaw reserved for moments when his walls were down and the wolf underneath was allowed to be soft.

His hand moved through her hair.

She was in Shadowclaw, though she didn’t remember arriving, and the last thing she remembered was—

She gasped.

Gav’s heart had stopped. She gave him her blood. Then nothing.

Her body tried to push itself upright. Her palms pressed flat against his chest, her heart slamming into her ribs.

Fin didn’t let her move.

One arm locked around her waist as if he had been anticipating this exact reaction. His other hand stayed in her hair, the massage uninterrupted, his fingers moving through the strands with a patience that said you are going to stay right here and I am going to hold you until your heart rate returns to a number I find acceptable.

“Hey.” His voice was low. Warm. Carrying zero urgency and maximum control. “You are going nowhere.”

“Gav—”

“Is fine.” Fin cut through the word before it could build momentum. “Dark magic is gone. His vitals stabilized. His color came back. Alaric confirmed zero residual corruption.” His fingers found a knot at the base of her skull and worked it loose. “He is alive, Serena. He is going to live. Breathe.”

She let out a shaky breath.

“You, on the other hand,” Fin continued, and his voice shifted by one degree, the warmth cooling into something that lived in the territory between affection and discipline, “are in significantly more trouble than the Gamma.”

His hand stilled in her hair.

“You used your blood on him.”

The sentence landed on her chest and stayed there.

“Three Master Mages and one Master Healer told you the same thing. Explicitly. With words. Using their mouths. Do not use your blood on the Gamma. The dark magic is unknown. The tether is active. Your reserves are depleted. The risk is unacceptable.” His fingers resumed their path through her hair, slower now. “You told me you wouldn’t.”

“His heart stopped—”

Fin kissed her. The kiss cut the sentence in half, his mouth covering hers with a precision that was equal parts affection and command, and the combination was so disorienting that the defense she had been constructing collapsed mid-syllable.

His hand came down on her backside. Sharp. Firm. The smack echoed off the stone walls of his bedroom with the particular acoustics of a chamber that had never heard this sound before and was adjusting to the new information.

“Bad girl.”

Serena jolted. The jolt was involuntary, full-body, the specific reaction of a woman who had been kissed and spanked simultaneously and whose nervous system was processing both inputs at once and arriving at conclusions that were contradictory and both correct.

She was in a chemise. A silk chemise that she had zero memory of putting on, which meant someone had changed her while she was unconscious, and the only person in Shadowclaw with the authority and the audacity to undress an unconscious Luna was the man whose lap she was currently lying across.

She was in Shadowclaw. In Fin’s bed. In a chemise she hadn’t chosen. And the man who had carried her here from Drakenfell was leaning against his headboard, one hand still in her hair, one hand still warm on her backside.

Fin had clearly been spending entirely too much time with Dexmon Drakenfell. The evidence was mounting. Waking up on top of him, in clothing she hadn’t applied, receiving a spanking while—

His hand came down again. Harder. The second smack landed before the thought could finish, as if Fin’s timing was calibrated to interrupt her internal monologue at the exact moment it was forming a coherent objection.

He sat up against the headboard, shifting her across his lap with one arm, positioning her face-down over his thighs with the efficient ease of a man rearranging something he owned.

His palm landed on her backside and then stayed, rubbing slow, firm circles that migrated lower, his fingers pressing between her thighs until they found her clit and the slow circles became precise, deliberate pressure that pulled a sound from her throat she hadn’t authorized.

Her mind was still in Drakenfell. Her body was in Shadowclaw. The two had not agreed to reconcile.

She should not be feeling this. She had just watched Gav die. Her body had no business responding to anything except exhaustion and grief, and yet every nerve ending Fin touched was voting against her higher reasoning with enthusiasm.

Fin was peeling all her defenses away one touch at a time like he had all night and she had no say in the matter.

“The day I joined the Brotherhood of the Hidden Flame, I had no information. I agreed to follow you blindly on one condition. Do you remember what that was?”

“Yes,” Serena breathed. “I owe you a favor.”

“The condition was that you would do something for me. I am ready to collect.” His hand moved faster. He worked her clit in tight, rapid circles that made her hips roll against his lap involuntarily.

A groan left him, low and rough, the sound vibrating through his chest and into her body through every point of contact.

He slipped a finger inside her. The entry was slow, deliberate, and the gasp that left her was sharp enough to echo. He began pumping, steady, controlled, each thrust carrying the same unhurried authority that defined everything Finnick Shadowclaw did.

“Good girl. You take what I give you.”

His finger curled inside her, finding the spot that made her back arch, and he held there for two seconds before resuming the rhythm.

Her face flushed under his gaze.

“My favor,” he continued, “is you are going to be crowned as Queen of Shadowclaw. Mine officially.”

She stiffened. The stiffening was immediate, a full-body tension that overrode the pleasure and reasserted the part of her brain that processed political implications.

“Fin, I—”

He pulled his finger out. His hand came down twice. Hard. Two sharp smacks that landed in rapid succession and cut her sentence at the root.

“Did I say you could talk? Bad girl.”