The creatures broke ranks, making a weird noise between a croaking roar and a hiss like a snake as they charged. The sound would flavor his nightmares for some time to come, along with their bloodshot staring eyes and faces bubbled and leathered with sun damage. all evidence of what they'd endured here. Any rational creature would have commited suicide to avoid this fate, but maybe by the time they reached this point they were beyond rationality.

He took the first one with a solid blow with the mace, close enough to get spattered by the blood and brain matter. His lady leaped into the fray with the machete, taking a head off with a smooth stroke.

Despite her tough couple of days, she demonstrated such elegant footwork he was almost caught with his mouth open and his guard down. Yes, she'd led smal armies during the Territory Wars, but he'd never seen her fight hand to hand. hell , he might ask her to protect him going forward.

He could imagine her caustic retort. Jacob, I'm not risking my manicure when I have a perfectly good servant to fight for me . . .

Ducking under his next opponent's lurch, he came back up with a parry and thrust. As the Fae tried to block his sword with a makeshift shield of lashed-together bones, he smashed the shield into shards with the mace, taking out the side of the male's face.

The eyes burned into his one last moment, blind pain and fury. Twisting around, Jacob saw a green light limn his lady's figure, the doorway opening where she stood, now fifteen feet away from him.

Jacob.

Another new opponent was coming in fast with two sharp blades, but he managed to backpedal in her direction. She'd taken down her two opponents, but was fighting the pul of that portal as fiercely. Her face showed the incredible strain, her feet planted and arms stretched out wide, holding herself anchored in this world. The green light started to flicker. If they missed their opportunity, Rhoswen might not open it again in time for Lyssa to survive another two days, vampire or no.

Chucking his sword at the last attacker, he spun, snatched up the pack, took two fast strides and sprang. Too slow. He snarled as the blade thunked solidly into his lower back. It didn't stop his forward momentum. Hitting Lyssa mid-body, he wrapped himself around her, tumbling them both through the portal.

That absolute darkness again, but he smelled forest floor beneath them. He was on top of her, her heartbeat under his chest, his arm stil around her waist, fingers curled in her tunic. When he put his forehead on hers, they drew a sigh of relief together.

She felt her way down his back, found the serrated blade. As she pul ed it free, he shuddered at the tearing sensation, but refused to let her go. When he'd entered this dark chasm to the desert portal, it had been sinister, no place he'd want to linger. Now, free of the desert world, alive, and yet not quite in Rhoswen's clutches, this in-between place was the best place he could imagine.

Lyssa pressed her lips to his face, his cheekbone, his jaw, then his mouth. He cradled her face in his hands, deepened the kiss, pressing his body down into hers so he felt every curve, the way her thighs spread, a natural cradle for him.

Then her touch slid down his jaw, to his throat. She broke the kiss and used her thumb to tilt his chin up, testing that restored strength, letting him feel the strain in his neck, his shoulders. With a Mistress's natural bent, she demonstrated the ability to hold him as she wished. When her mouth touched his throat, he trembled, his fingers curling into the torn tunic on her hips.

Jacob, you once again have a choice.

“No, my lady.” He murmured it into her hair, the shel of that beautiful ear. “You do. I was always born to be your servant, from the very first time my soul came into this world. You are my heart, and if I'm not fully bound to that heart, then I'm not whole. You understand?”

“It is my choice.” She repeated it, her other hand moving to his face in the black, but he knew what her expression was, could tel only by her voice, the way he knew everything about her body language, her emotions, her cravings and darkness.

He swal owed. “Yes, my lady. all choices, when it comes to my life, my will , are yours.” She was feeling a Mistress's pleasure in his words, a Mistress's craving that surged to the forefront, no matter the carnage they'd left behind, or how weak she felt, what she'd been through. It was not just the nature of the vampire, but the nature of the woman herself.

The superior strength and quickness, those powers she'd given him with her turning, they would now reside within her once again, when she reached ful strength. While he could mourn those abilities to protect her, and there would be times his alpha nature would deeply regret their loss when he wanted to resist her attempts to be too much the Mistress with him, he knew this was how it was meant to be. She'd tilted the universe to save him, and the universe had been kind enough to all ow it.

But now it was returning to how it was meant to be.

“Please, my lady. Lyssa.”

Her fangs eased in, a hum in her throat, an emotional sound echoed in his aching heart.

I've missed this, Sir Vagabond. Feeding from you as a vampire.

I've missed it as well, my lady. And he had. There in the desert world, he'd almost begged her to take the precious time to reinstitute that mark.

I like it when you beg, Jacob. You know this. “But I also know your heart.” She slid her fangs out to tease him a bit as she spoke, pricking his skin. “I feel that emptiness, cal ing to me. I want that bond as well , enough to make me hesitate, to be sure you're sure. You say it is my choice, and I will agree it is, for you long ago surrendered to me as your Mistress, but I will ask you to say it one more time.”

“I will do more than that, my lady.” Lifting her hand, he placed it upon his chest, over his heart, and spoke the oath he'd taken under Thomas's training.

The oath he'd spoken the night he'd been given fifty lashes, part of the Ritual of Binding to a Vampire Queen.

“I am sworn to your service. Compel ed by absolute loyalty, I safeguard your well -being before my own or any other ties of family or friendship. I swear it by the giving of my blood to you and before all of divinity, may my life be cursed and my soul be damned if I speak false or ever betray the vow.” She pressed her fangs back into him again then, and this time he felt the release of the serum. He made himself hold stil for it, even though he wanted her so badly. He wanted to touch her, to press her body back down under his, reinforce that oath, this re-marking. The craving was so fierce he wondered if he'd somehow retained that ceaseless vampire carnality.

Sexual drive is still very strong in a third-mark, Jacob. A touch of humor, coupled with something deeper, moved through her. Plus, you have always had a delicious, natural abundance of it.

Lyssa slid a hand over her servant's chest. Her servant. One taste of her blood away from being her ful servant once again. She had to admit it . . . she'd been a vampire for a long time, and though her Fae blood was an integral part of her, this felt more like her real self. In the end, perhaps she was more a vampire with Fae powers, than a Fae with vampire ones. It was good to feel that, to know that. To understand more about who and what she was. To feel a true sense of that, the power and strength of it, for the first time in several years. Even if she was otherwise a bit on the weak side . . . at the moment.

Lying back on the forest floor, she drew him down upon her again. “Brace yourself over me, Jacob,” she commanded in a husky voice.

He pressed his palms into the earth on either side of her. In this utter darkness, where neither had the ability to see, it was even more intimate. Though she always liked the pleasure of seeing him, touch had its own special benefits. Opening his laced trousers, she slid her hand over his cock, thick and ready in her hand. It was already turgid from her marking him, the significance of that having its effect on him. It had moved her deeply, how important it was to him, how much he wanted that mark reinstated, to the point it had almost panicked him, not having it. She understood, because she experienced the same feeling, knowing it wasn't there.

The leggings she wore were in tatters, so it was easy enough to slip out of them, guide him into her.

“At my pace, my servant,” she whispered, and he obeyed, holding back all that delicious strength as she took him slowly to the hilt, then drew him down upon her. His elbows came to rest in line with his palms, surrounding her. He didn't like putting his ful weight on her, always worried about her comfort, but she let him see in her mind now that he was not causing her any harm, only pleasure. She wanted his weight as she tilted her head back, guided his mouth to her throat, that delicious feeling of a Goddess nurturing her lover, even as she took him in her body.

It reminded her of the ritual she'd witnessed with Tabor and Rhoswen the previous night.

Drink from me, Jacob. Make the mark complete.

He'd remembered how to use his canines, how to bite strong and not hesitate, using the second-mark strength to be decisive about it. Her pussy rippled around him as he did it, welcoming him. During that fight before the portal opened, though the two of them were well coordinated in battle, their mind communication aligned, it wasn't the same as a third mark. She'd felt that absence keenly, a knife in her lower vitals as much as it was for him.

It swept through them both, that disorienting power and heat, the wash of energy that momentarily locked their bodies together in its burn. The third-marking bound his soul to her. She could dive as deeply into him as she wished, owning every part of him, every molecule of blood, every muscle, every thought, every wish, every feeling. It required, no, demanded a level of trust unknown in any world.

Human, vampire or Fae. Only vampires and servants had this potential, because once the bond was made, a servant had no choice but to learn to accept it. However, those like Jacob who took the step into that unknown territory will ingly, who embarked on that journey, and the vampires who appreciated that leap of faith—a leap ironical y that they themselves, as Dominants, did not often have the same ability to take—had a relationship like no other.

As she felt that bond again, she exulted in it, revitalized in a way that might be deceptive, given her many hours in the desert world, but she would accept it nevertheless. She knew he'd miss the ability to protect her to the level that being a vampire had given him, but he didn't realize he'd protected her more than any male who'd ever been in her life.