Hunger Untamed (Feral Warriors #5)(51)

He could blame his colossal loss of control on his f**ked-up emotions, but that was only a small part of the truth. He'd never had much control when it came to Ariana. From the moment he'd met her, she'd turned his world on end, and it had never righted.

In the aching, throbbing depths of his heart he knew the truth he'd been trying to ignore. Whether she was dead or alive, whether he kept his distance from her or made love to her until they were both breathless from exhaustion, he would never be able to go back to being the man he'd been before he'd known her. All he could do was hope that they survived the next days, and that when this was over, and they'd gone their separate ways, this ungodly need for her would dim to the point he could think of something, anything, else.

Chapter Fourteen

Ariana sat on the cool lip of the pool deep beneath the Temple of the Queens and watched Kougar as he paced away from her, pulling on what was left of his pants, his powerful body gleaming, his back rigid with a tension that wouldn't normally be there after the powerful release they'd just shared. In that release, the mating bond had opened almost completely. It still looked like hell, tarnished and shadowed, but no longer was it a shrunken, mangled mess.

And the poison was flowing freely.

The most frightening thing was, she didn't know what the poison was doing. With Hookeye's ability, he could be setting any kind of time bomb inside them, and they wouldn't know until it was too late.

Despite all that, she felt stronger than she had in years, in centuries. Stronger than she had in a millennium. Pleasure strengthened her, but what she'd felt in Kougar's arms went so far beyond mere pleasure as to be atomic in strength. She felt . . . reborn. Renewed.

Whole.

But as she watched him pace, her heart at once throbbed with the rightness of him with her again, and ached with the knowledge that they weren't right together at all. And never really had been. Even in those days when they'd been mated, she hadn't been entirely happy. At times, yes. When Kougar was with her, usually. The moment he'd touched her she'd forgotten everything but her joy in him--the love in his eyes and the gentle power of his body as he brought her to climax over and over again.

But those times they'd been together had been all too few. Even when they were together, there had been a distance between them she'd never been able to fully breach. He'd given her a part of himself, but never all. Never anything approaching all.

Right from the beginning, things had been difficult between them. Melisande's prejudice against the Therians and Ferals had infected her ranks long, long ago, her own attitude toward the shifters formed in the crucible of her friend's bitterness. So when she'd found herself attracted to the Chief of the Ferals, she'd been close to horrified.

The sparks had flown between them from the start, their courtship more battle than wooing. But in the end, she'd let her judgment be clouded by the excitement she'd found in his arms. And by his own insistence that they were fated to be together, that resisting him was useless. By that point, she hadn't wanted to resist. She'd wanted only to revel in the joy of his rare, earth-shattering smiles, and bask in the pleasure she'd felt beneath his hands.

They'd been joined together deep in the Ferals' ritual cave, surrounded by flaming torches and two dozen naked, antagonistic shape-shifters who'd watched coldly as Kougar had taken her, claiming her in a ritual of blood and sex, forming what should have been an unbreakable cord joining them mind and body--the mating bond. Though Kougar had invited her own maidens to witness the ritual and join in the accompanying feast, only Melisande had been there and, unbeknownst to Ariana, woven magic to keep the mating bond from binding fully.

Even when they'd been married, she'd felt marginalized in Kougar's life. A piece of his world, but only a piece. But she had loved him. Desperately, she'd loved him. With all that had come after--the grief and guilt and anger, then later, the bitter, awful loneliness--she'd forgotten just how much she'd loved him.

And how easy it would be to fall under his spell all over again. But never again would she sacrifice the well-being of her maidens for a man. Any man.

Kougar turned back to face her, his expression closed, shuttered once more. "Have you remembered anything more?"

Ariana lifted a hand to brush her damp hair from her face. "No." She tapped her head. "It's like a dust storm in here. It'll take time for the dust to settle before I can see what blew in."

A strange chill made her shiver.

Kougar stepped toward her. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing." But as a vision rose in her head, she stiffened. The eyes. Hookeye's eyes rose in her mind as they had when Kougar removed her moonstones, as they had all those times a millennium ago. In those eyes, she saw determination and triumph. And a raw cruelty she didn't remember from before.

Her pulse began to race with the frantic need to fight or flee, when she could do neither. She tried to close her mind to him, tried to force him away, but he simply watched her with cruel amusement as the chills grew worse.

Kougar was beside her, his hands grasping her shoulders. "Ariana?"

"Hookeye." And suddenly the eyes were gone. The shivers subsided, and she could breathe again. "He was in my head. I could see his eyes." Her hand fumbled for her wrist, her fingers sliding over the moonstone-encrusted cuff. "I'm still wearing the moonstones. How is he seeing me?"