Reborn (Shadow Beast Shifters Book 3)

“We can use their energy,” Shadow said, “as it has the potential to power our own in the fight. But… wouldn’t that go against everything you stand for? Do you think you’ll be able to handle the fallout of what might occur if their energy is used up?”

Fallout if their energy is used up…

I knew what that meant, and since I’d intimately felt the death of many creatures when I’d been bonded to them, I knew I’d react very badly to it happening again. But we were talking about the end of the worlds here.

“I don’t think we have a choice. Dannie is so much stronger than any being we’ve ever faced, right?” This question was more relevant to him since he was a few thousand years old and immensely powerful. My history was with the Torma, who were basically worms on the totem pole of power.

Shadow nodded. “I haven’t truly feared another in two thousand years, not since coming into my powers and bonding with Inky, but my mother… She has me very aware of her presence. I don’t enjoy this new awareness.”

Unlike the rest of us, he wasn’t used to being the underdog.

“What happened to you in those first few moments after Dannie manipulated all of our memories?” I asked him. He’d told me bits and pieces, but there were a lot of missing details.

All the sex had kind of gotten in the way of the talking.

No. Regrets.

Despite the well-lit hallway, his face was awash in shadowy planes. “After we left you down in the caverns, I ended up in the castle, trying to figure out friend from foe. Most of my family was gone, but that didn’t mean there weren’t a ton of messes to clean up. In the midst of that, there…” His brow furrowed. “It was a swift wind that expelled everyone from the castle except me. The wind entered my mind, and maybe if I’d reacted faster, or had been more prepared, I could have fought her mind manipulation.”

He shook his head. “She took me by surprise, and everything went dark. When I came to, the sort of rage I’d never experienced before slammed into me. I vaguely remember burning buildings down and leveling mountains until my friends got to me. We were all confused, remembering each other but knowing that we’d been messed with. After that, my beast took over, and I destroyed everything I touched, including parts of the worlds and the Solaris System.”

My throat was tight, and even though I’d been the one to ask, I almost wished I hadn’t. Thinking about that time made me feel sick and broken. “Dannie was clever,” I rasped. “She didn’t take it all away; she just changed the narrative enough to get what she needed from us. I mean, Torin was waiting for me in Torma, and I was his true mate, so it was easy to slide me right into that life, leaving you free to rule the Shadow Realm, as you were meant to.”

If the cut of his jaw was any indication, he was not a fan of this reasoning. “She wasn’t that clever. She should have expected that neither of us would roll over into our new lives. You had no true history with Torin, and then to cover it all up by pretending that all of Torma had been locked in a stasis—”

“Which almost worked because you literally did have them locked in stasis for a while when we were in the Shadow Realm,” I reminded him.

And why the fuck was I defending Dannie right now? We weren’t in a school debate where I had to prove my point. Dannie had fucked us hard, sans lube, and we had every right to be angry as hell at her.

“What happened to your true mate?” There’d been no mention of Ixana and I wanted to know where that bitch currently was.

Shadow met my gaze, the gold in his eyes bleeding into red flames. “She had her memory wiped and ended up in Torma.”

It took me an embarrassingly long time to understand what he meant. And it wasn’t like he’d spoken in code or anything. It was just… fuck.

“What?”

He shook his head at me. “I won’t say it again, Sunshine. You heard me the first time.”

“You consider me to be your true mate now.” My words were slow and confused.

His scoff indicated that he was already annoyed with this line of questioning. “I don’t consider shit. You are my mate. Chosen and true. The bond between us would not exist otherwise and since both of us have two sides to our souls, it’s not even a far leap to understand how we’re bonded.”

I waved both hands in front of me, fairly certain he was insulting me again. “Far leap or not, it’s a huge step for you to make a statement like that, and I don’t need no ‘I won’t say it again’ bullshit, thank you very much, Shadow Bastard.”

His lips twitched. “How’s your ass feeling, Sunshine?”

My mouth went dry. “Uh, I mean, I’m all into sexy subject changes, but that one seems like a relatively extreme segue.”

His lips curved further. “It’s not as far a segue as you might think because if your smartass mouth doesn’t stop soon, I’m going to test out your ability to enjoy pain with your pleasure.”

I stepped into him. “Promises, promises.” I said that more than was probably healthy, but whatever. He apparently had no fucking clue how into this side of him I was.

His power wrapped around me, and I was dragged slowly up his body to receive a firm slap of his huge hand against my ass before he wrapped his fingers across the muscle and kneaded it. “We have to find your friend,” he told me softly, “and Midnight, and save the world. That’s the only thing that’s saving you from being tied to my bed for the next month.”

His hold on my ass tightened, and just when it was about to reach the level where I might have had to tap out, his other hand slipped down the front of my pants.

Oh, wait, I wasn’t even wearing pants because apparently his magic was that freaking awesome. It could strip me in a single thought. Luckily, we were still in the white hallway, without a bunch of onlookers to witness my destruction via orgasm.

Shadow’s fingers found my damp heat, sliding inside, and curling up to hit my G-spot. At the same time, the other hand on my ass stroked across my flesh.

I arched into him, the low heady feeling of a decent orgasm already building deep inside of me. “Shadow, please,” I moaned.

There was no time, as he’d already stated, for anything in depth, but he couldn’t start this and not end it. He slapped me again, and at the same time pumped those fingers in my pussy harder and faster. I was screaming before the first swirls of my orgasm hit, his hands giving me a pleasurable pain that tipped me over in an instant.

“You like that, Sunshine?” he murmured.

I wanted to say no because this arrogant asshole was already too sure of his sexual prowess, but I also wouldn’t lie to him. Whatever he was doing felt so amazing that I couldn’t feel my legs, or my lungs, my breathing shallow and unstable. Not to mention my heart was slamming into my chest with enough force for a heart attack.

“Whom do you belong to, Sunshine?”

I sobbed and his fingers slowed. “You!” I burst out. “I belong to you.”

The tilt of his lips indicated that was the right answer. His fingers moved again as he used them to fuck me harder than ever, and this time, the swirls exploded and I came with enough force that I managed to bite through my lip, drawing blood in my excitement.

“Who is your true mate, Sunshine?”

“You.” There was no hesitation in my voice. Shadow owned every part of me, and I would take whatever Dannie put us through just to have these moments with him.

“You are my true mate,” he confirmed as he kissed me, the slight copper of my blood between us. “You’re mine in all ways, and for that, Torin is dead when I have some time to waste. I’m already anticipating the day we never speak about that bastard again.”

“Yes,” I moaned, still riding the final swirls of my orgasm. “You possessive beast.”

He didn’t deny it, just slowly removed his fingers from inside me before he lifted them to his mouth and tasted each one. Swear to fuck I almost came again just seeing that.

“Come on,” Shadow said, his magic returning my clothing and cleaning me up in the process. “We can collect your creatures once we know there’s a need for them.”

I’d completely forgotten that was the reason we’d stopped in this hallway in the first place, but with that statement, Shadow brought us back to our reality.

He moved toward the library entrance, and it took me a moment to catch up since my legs were firing on half their normal cylinders. It was only the thought of Angel and Midnight that had me pulling myself together as fast as I could.

Interlude or not, it was time to focus on finding my friends and pulling our pack together. We’d need every member to have a chance at defeating Dannie in this final battle.