Gav looked at her, all humor draining from his eyes. “Of course.”

She opened her mouth.

Then froze.

Because the question was already answering itself inside her chest, and the answer was a door she couldn’t un-open. She had two mates. Two. Dexmon and Finnick, both of whom had almost died on this mountain for her. Both of whom were bleeding in a chamber right now because they’d thrown themselves between her and a horde of starving vampires without a second’s hesitation.

Dexmon and Gavriel had only just started acting normal around each other again. The tension between them had barely cooled. Acknowledging whatever this electricity was would pour gasoline on a fire she’d spent weeks trying to smother.

What good would it do?

None. The answer was none.

Her hand went to the back of her neck. She closed her mouth and swallowed.

Before she could say anything, Gav’s eyes surged molten gold.

Serena blinked a few times stunned. She had seen Dexmon and Fin’s wolves surface a handful of times. But she had never, in the entire time she’d known him, seen Gavriel’s wolf be that aggressive. There was a difference between his eyes glowing earlier and this and she knew the line because she was mated to two Alphas. Gavriel kept his cool better than anyone she knew.

He clamped his jaw shut and closed his eyes, every muscle in his body locking rigid, tendons standing out in his neck like cables under strain. His hands curled into fists at his sides, knuckles white, arms trembling with the effort of holding something down that was clawing its way up from the inside.

“Gav?” Serena stepped closer. “Are you alright?”

He moved in a blur.

One second he was three feet away, fighting for control with his eyes shut. The next, Serena’s back hit the cliff wall and Gavriel’s body was pressed against hers, forearms braced on either side of her head, chest heaving, pinning her there with a force that wasn’t Gavriel.

His entire body was shaking. Fine, violent tremors that ran through him like fault lines cracking, his breath coming in ragged bursts through clenched teeth. The gold in his eyes had consumed the green entirely, and something darker bled in at the corners, black edging into the irises like ink dropped in water.

“Serena, get away from me. I’ll catch up in a minute,” he rasped.

His forehead dropped against the stone beside her head. A broken sound tore from his throat, half growl, half something worse, the sound of a man losing a fight with his own body. His arms shook against the wall. Every breath dragged through him like it was being pulled over broken glass.

“Gavriel? No, I’m not leaving you. What’s happening?”

His hips rutted into her once. Hard. Involuntary. A full-body spasm that slammed his pelvis against hers with a force that had zero thought behind it and every instinct in the world driving it.

Gavriel made a sound like he’d been stabbed.

“Fuck.” The word ripped out of him, drenched in horror. “Serena, I can’t… I’m…”

Serena cupped his face with her gloved hands. “Hey. Look at me.”

She waited until his eyes were on hers. They were wolf gold, but there was some black in them too at the corners.

“I’m not going anywhere. You’re not going to hurt me, Gav. Tell me what’s wrong?”

“My wolf.” He gasped it like a confession dragged out under torture. “Wants you, Serena. I need you to get away from me. Now.”

It took her a second to understand what he meant.

One full second where the words hung between them and her brain processed “wants” through every possible interpretation before landing on the one that surely she was wrong about.

Gavriel used that second. His hand shot to her throat, fingers closing around the chain of her necklace, and ripped it off. The clasp snapped. The pendant fell. Leather and metal hit the stone floor with a sound that was too small for how much it changed.

Without it, every sensation crashed through her body in a single, devastating wave.

The electricity from earlier came back with a vengeance. His scent poured in like a dam breaking, flooding every sense at once: storm-wind, fresh earth after rain, and something underneath. The necklace had been holding back an ocean.

She gasped at the sensation.

“Serena.”

Her name left him in a shattered rasp as his hips jerked again, again, short desperate thrusts that had zero restraint left. His whole body was shaking apart against her, the gold-and-black of his eyes locked on her mouth like he was one second from claiming it.

Then he lost it. His hips were moving faster. Involuntary. Desperate. His body grinding against hers with the helpless, shaking rhythm.

Aurelia took control aggressively. Faster and harder than Serena had ever experienced, a hostile takeover that left zero room for negotiation. One heartbeat she was Serena, rational, terrified, trying to understand. The next she was a passenger in her own body, watching her wolf seize her limbs like a puppeteer grabbing strings.

Her hips rolled up to meet every desperate grind of his, matching the rhythm that made Gavriel choke on a growl.

Aurelia made a sound that did not belong to Serena, a low, hungry, almost a moan of satisfaction as she rolled her hips in a slow, filthy circle against the hard press of him.

The friction pulled another punched-out noise from Gavriel’s chest that vibrated straight through both of them.

His arousal hit her next. It poured down her throat and settled low in her core, making her empty and aching in a way that had nothing to do with her own decisions.

Aurelia answered it by grinding back harder, chasing the friction like she was starving. Her back arched off the wall, body pressing into his with a hunger that felt like standing in the center of a wildfire.

Aurelia: Mate. Mate. Mate. Mate.