Chapter 153: Burning

My knees struck the hardwood with a dull thud, shooting a flash of physical pain up my legs, but it was nothing—absolutely nothing—compared to the inferno that exploded inside me. It felt as though someone had sliced open my veins and poured in molten lead. A searing, untamable heat surged straight to my head, blinding my senses and melting my bones. Every gasp for air burned like sharp needles in my chest, tearing through my lungs.

"Jane?!" Magnus’s voice, raw with primal horror, shattered the silence.

In the next heartbeat, he was beside me. Dropping to his knees, he scooped me into his arms and hauled me flush against his broad chest, though even his skin felt like a roaring furnace against mine.

"It hurts... Magnus, I’m burning..." I gasped out, my back arching violently in his grip. The agony was alive, breathing, demanding a sacrifice as it broke me from within, twisting my joints.

My uncontrollable heat cycles—they had returned. But never in my life had my breeder heat been this aggressive, this utterly destructive.

"Jane!" Magnus roared, his eyes flooding with dark, primal fury. Lifting me effortlessly into his arms, he lunged toward the bed and laid me down against the cool silk sheets. Pinning my shoulders firmly to keep me from thrashing and hurting myself, he bellowed at the top of his lungs, "A doctor! Now! Get Alan in here immediately!"

Through the suffocating haze of my agony, the only sound left in the world was the violent thumping of my own heart against my ears. Doctor Alan burst into the bedroom so fast it felt as if he had materialized out of thin air.

Heaving for breath, his hair completely disheveled, Alan tossed his medical kit onto the nightstand and instantly bent over me, reaching for his scanner and syringes.

Magnus paced the perimeter of the room, his movements restless and volatile. He looked ready to tear apart with his bare hands anyone who dared approach the door. The air in the bedroom grew thick and suffocating, saturated with his dark, suffocating pheromones of panic and raw aggression.

"Do something, Alan! Give her a painkiller! Put out this fucking fire!" the Alpha snarled as I let out another strangled moan, my fingers gripping the sheets so tightly the fabric creaked under the strain.

Closing his eyes for a brief second to center himself, the pack doctor swept the scanner along my spine before checking my pulse and pupils. His face hardened, settling into an expression of utmost focus and grave tension.

"Alpha," Alan said slowly, straightening up and adjusting his scanning glasses on the bridge of his nose. His voice was low, yet in the sudden, heavy silence, every word echoed like a thunderclap. "I cannot give her any medicine. It will disrupt the process."

"What fucking process?!" Magnus closed the distance in a single leap, seizing the doctor by the lapels of his coat, his fangs elongating in a lethal threat.

"Alpha Magnus, get a hold of yourself!" Alan commanded, unyielding. He let out a tired sigh, staring straight into the enraged, silver eyes of the clan head. "This is not an illness. It is no ordinary heat. Look at her vitals. Her organism is restructuring itself. Fundamentally. Her human physiology is no longer suppressing her true nature. No medication can fix this—nor should it. You are the only one who can help her."

The physician turned his gaze toward me as I lay on the bed in a semi-delirious state, before finishing softly, uttering the words that would alter everything forever:

"Her true awakening is very close now. It is a matter of days. Soon, her inner essence will be fully restored. Under no circumstances must you dampen these heats with synthetic suppressants. The doctors in her past only worsened her condition with their chemicals—and you ought to sever that incompetent fool’s head for what he did to her. An Alpha Breeder’s heat can only be eased by her true mate. Her essence is crying out for you; her body cannot regulate its own temperature without her mate. This heat is a desperate plea, a call for your bond. So..."

Alan gathered his instruments and stepped out, shutting the bedroom door firmly behind him.

The moment the latch clicked, Magnus’s massive hands slid over my burning skin, eliciting a sharp groan of profound relief from deep within my throat.

"My girl... You frightened me to death," he rasped, his voice thick with emotion.

And a kiss that shattered every nerve in a burst of primal, intoxicating ecstasy was my only answer.

***

Magnus

The moment the door clicked shut behind Alan, cutting us off from the rest of the world, I could no longer draw a proper breath. The air in the bedroom had grown unbearably thick, heavy, saturated with the rich, intoxicating scent of my true mate.

She was burning. My girl was on fire.

Stripping off my shirt and tossing it aside, I kept my darkened gaze locked on her, feeling the primal, wild beast inside me clawing its way to the surface and shattering every chain of control. I had tried to restrain myself every single second I spent near her. Even when I took her on the couch, I held back, though the urge to keep her pinned beneath me was absolute agony. The mere thought of losing contact with her skin shredded me from the inside out.

My wolf roared, thrashing against his cage, because his mate was writhing on the silk sheets in an agony that only I could end.

For five fucking years, my beast had been silent, and I hadn’t even been able to stomach the thought of another woman in my bed. No one but her. Only the memory of her skin beneath my fingertips, only the echo of her moans ringing like music in my ears.

And now she was here, and she was mine—only mine. Her bare body, barely veiled by the sheet I had draped over her to shield her from the doctor’s eyes, called to me. Nothing could highlight her curves more enticingly than that silk clinging to her form. And now, it revealed far more than it concealed, teasing my instincts and feeding the hunger that had starved me for years...