“Good,” Dominic murmured. “And then?”
“You let it rise.” He exhaled shakily, and his eyelids fluttered. “Warm place. Covered. About an hour…until it doubles.”
Finally, the buzzing under his skin dulled, fading from a roar to a low hum.
Dominic leaned in, resting his forehead briefly against Sammy’s. “That’s it,” he said softly. “You’re doing great.”
Sammy huffed a weak laugh. “I’m literally baking in the middle of a meltdown.”
“And doing an excellent job of it.” Dominic’s lips curved before brushing against his in a chaste, tender kiss. “How do you feel now?”
“A little better.”
He still didn’t understand what the hell had just happened, or why he felt like his soul was going to vibrate into another plane of existence. At least the room had stopped detonating, though.
“Thank you,” he whispered, arching into his mate for another kiss.
“Any time.”
“What’s happening to me?” he asked, his voice riding the edge of pleading.
Dominic searched his face with an unreadable expression. “We should go.”
“Dom.”
He shook his head. “This isn’t the place. We’ll talk about it at—”
His roar rattled the windowpanes and shook the walls. Lips peeled back from his teeth. Eyes flared amber, then bright gold, and the skin pulled taut across his face.
Dominic shoved Sammy backward with one hand while he reached over his shoulder with the other, clawing at the pale blond head buried against the crook of his neck.
Henri snarled, a feral, deranged sound that turned Sammy’s blood to ice. The mask was gone, the polished veneer stripped away, leaving only the monster beneath.
Eyes wide and crazed, his fangs buried in Dominic’s skin, there was a franticness about him now, a madness that burned away all traces of humanity.
Time slowed, crawling in slow motion as Sammy watched a river of blood spill from his mate’s neck and soak into the front of his shirt. Anger and fear battled inside him, both tinged with the frustration of uselessness.
“No!” he screamed, his voice ripping painfully from his throat.
Something inside him snapped.
Not cleanly. Not neatly. It tore loose.
Something cold and biting surged through him, flooding every nerve at once. The strange, crawling energy that had been simmering beneath his skin erupted outward, no longer contained, no longer waiting.
Henri jerked.
A strangled sound tore from his throat as his body went rigid, and his grip on Dominic faltered. His fangs slipped free, blood spilling fresh and bright from the corners of his mouth.
He landed on the floor and staggered backward, his face contorted with a combination of confusion and fear as he stared down at his hands.
Thin cracks split across his skin, splintering outward from his fingertips. Light burned beneath the surface, not red, not fire, but something brighter. Something that pulsed in time with Sammy’s racing heartbeat.
“What—”
Whatever he meant to say, he never got to finish.
The cracks widened, and light poured through them. His body fractured, but not with force. It was subtler than that, gentler,like something that had already broken and was only now realizing it.