Fate doesn’t bend. That’s the rule. Or at least it was the rule, up until Gavriel Sterling.

The ancestors had said he would change fate months ago, but at the time, Rook did not understand what they meant. But when Gavriel woke from his coma two days ago and saw Serena, Rook finally understood.

There are matebonds that are given. There are matebonds that are chosen. But in one single case, a matebond had been earned.

Three lifetimes. Three versions of himself. Three chances to love someone else, someone easier, someone who wasn’t already claimed. He chose her. Every. Single. Time. In his first two lifetimes, he chose to step back and suffer in silence to protect her. In this lifetime, he had made that choice again after giving her the truth.

The matebond Gavriel Sterling had been feeling with Serena was not from the mark on his shoulder. A female mark does not create a matebond, only a male mark can do that. What he was feeling had been fate, not biology.

A Gamma who loved a woman so deeply, through multiple lifetimes, that fate blessed it even if she was already claimed by two. A love so deep that it overpowered his fated tie in his first life, his second, and in this one.

The Moon Goddess and fate had honored his human. Serena had chosen his human.

And at the current moment, her venom was surging through his body like a storm.

Gavriel’s eyes were wolf-gold, Rook at the surface.

The taste was a drug, and he was addicted before his third swallow, each pull flooding him with warmth and gold and the maddening sweetness of the woman his wolf had wanted since the first time her scent hit him in a corridor and rewired his entire goddamn existence.

He sucked greedily at the gash, drawing her blood like an anchor holding him to consciousness. Without letting go of her hand, he moved.

It took less than a second. One blur of savage motion, his free hand hooking the waistband of her already-unzipped suit and shoving it down her hips along with her thong in a single, ruthless yank. His own suit came off next, also already unzipped, stripped with the efficiency of a wolf who considered clothing a personal insult.

His cock throbbed, thick and aching, and he thrust into her in one brutal stroke.

He felt every inch of her tight pussy forced open around him, the hot, silky walls resisting for a fraction of a second before yielding in a wet, perfect slide that took him all the way to the root.

She clenched hard the second he bottomed out, feral, instinctive, her wolf locking him inside her like it never planned to let him leave.

A raw whimper tore from her throat and vibrated straight through the fangs still buried in his shoulder. She didn’t release.

The sensation amplified everything.

Instinct overwrote every civilized thought either of them had ever had.

His hips snapped forward, driving into her with relentless force, each thrust deeper and harder. He fucked her like a wolf dragged back from death and determined to prove he was alive, hips pounding, cock dragging against every slick, fluttering inch of her until the pressure broke him.

He didn’t stand a chance.

He came immediately, unable to hold back, thick pulses of cum flooding her as her cunt milked him through it, the orgasm so violent he whimpered against her hand.

The orgasm should have emptied him. It didn’t.

His hips didn’t stop, still pumping into her.

Then he released her hand and leaned forward as his own fangs extended.

He sank them into her neck, right over Dexmon’s existing mark. Unintentional. It was prime real estate and the angle was just right. But the audacity of that placement was something Gavriel would have had opinions about if he’d been awake enough to form them.

His venom surged into her, burning and electric, as their matebond snapped fully into place with a storm of possession that neither wolf gave a single fuck about sorting out later.

The connection that had been aggressively avoided by two people who were so busy being ’friends,’ had formed. Threads of shimmering gold wove between them, binding wolf to wolf and soul to soul on a level that was primal, permanent, and completely unconcerned with how inconvenient the timing was.

Gavriel’s eyes flickered back to their regular color at that moment. He couldn’t have stopped if he tried.

The pleasure was all consuming. He had been fighting this urge for months since the day he met Serena. Now that he finally was inside her, it was better than he could have even fathomed. The stretch of her around his cock, the way she took every thick inch of him, was tight. Hot. Perfect.

Possessive heat flooded his chest. He had waited. He had starved. And now that he had her, the thought of ever pulling out felt almost unbearable.

His teeth stayed sunk in her neck as his hands shoved her thighs farther apart, spreading her wide beneath him so he could sink even deeper. He didn’t slow down. He sped up, hips slamming into her in a relentless rhythm while he held her in place with his bite, claiming her with every deep, punishing stroke.

Serena’s gold eyes flashed green, disoriented. Their bodies were locked together in a raw, uncontrollable frenzy, unable to stop.

But she didn’t just take it. Her hips drove up to meet every thrust, fucking him back harder, faster, the pent-up emotion she had carried for months spilling out of her in raw, relentless motion, like she had been starving for this and was finally done holding back. Emotions she hadn’t even admitted to herself were pouring out.

Her body spasmed against him, the pressure releasing in a hard, uncontrollable wave. The feel of it pulled a raw groan from his throat.

She released first, her eyes fluttering closed and her body falling limp beneath him. He was still holding on, still fucking into her with that same desperate need, unable to stop until he followed her over the edge and emptied himself inside her.

Then he let go, his fangs retracted, and his eyes closed.