Sia splashed down into cold, dark water.
Her body plunged below the surface, down and down and down, as giant waves rolled above her. A sudden, bright orange light erupted as she struggled to climb back up. The percussion shook the sea all around her, her head throbbing with the sudden boom of a massive explosion.
No!
She fought her way to the surface, gulping in mouthfuls of salt water with each panicked cry.
No. She couldn’t be too late.
“Trygg!” She started screaming his name the instant her head emerged from the waves.
The sea lapped at her face, briny and cold. Filling her lungs, soaking her clothes, the waves threatened to drag her under. She swam toward the fireball that bobbed several hundred yards away, her heart breaking as she stared at the total obliteration of what had been the cargo ship Lazaro had directed her to.
“Trygg!”
Sia swiped at her salt-crusted eyes and peered into the darkness. But as she searched the waves and floating debris, he was nowhere to be found.
She sucked in a mouthful of air and dove down, forcing her eyes open and using her preternaturally keen sight to look for shapes in the black water.
The search was grueling, horrific. Trygg hadn’t been the only man on board Santino’s booby-trapped ship. Sia swam past limbs and other grotesque remnants of the crew who’d apparently been unaware they were sailing to their deaths.
But then she saw the large shape of a man she’d know anywhere.
And to her relief, Trygg’s body was intact.
She swam to him, propelled by a grim sense of elation. He was alive. But he was unconscious in the water, his face down, bleeding profusely. By some miracle, he had survived the explosion, but it wouldn’t take long for the sharks to come. There was no time to assess the severity of his wounds. She needed to get him on dry land first.
The lights of Naples and the rest of Italy’s coastline twinkled in the far distance. Sia could make the long swim with Trygg in tow, but the steep, jagged island of Capri was closer.
She swam with Trygg’s unmoving body into the arched shelter of a cave at the base of the rocky island, calling upon her Atlantean strength and speed to take them there swiftly. Laying him gently on the small, sandy incline inside, she tore away his shredded black clothing and took in the extent of his injuries.
She wanted to be thankful that he was alive, but his wounds were far more severe than she’d realized in the water. Everywhere she looked, his skin was torn and riddled with lacerations and contusions. His face too. His rugged, scarred, beautiful face.
“Oh, Trygg,” she whispered, leaning down to rest her cheek against his. “I’m sorry I didn’t reach you sooner. Please wake up.”
He was Breed, and while she didn’t know how long it had been since he’d last fed, no amount of human blood would be able to mend so many injuries. And these were just the ones she could see. Internally, he must be hurting too.
Before long, he would be dying.
Sia could do nothing to stifle the sob that broke loose from her throat. “Trygg, please don’t leave me. I love you. I can’t lose you like this.”
He didn’t respond. His breathing was shallow, too slow.
He needed blood badly.
If he had a Breedmate like Melena or Bella, their blood might be strong enough to nourish his dying cells and organs before death took him. But Trygg needed something even more powerful than that.
Sia had the power to save him.
Her Atlantean blood was immortal. She could revive him, but like a Breedmate, to feed him her blood meant binding him to her forever. But worse than that, she would be doing it without his consent.
Shackling him to her much the same way he had been enslaved by Dragos and then Vicky. Except that with Sia, that shackle would be unbreakable.
It would be forever.
She couldn’t think of anything she’d enjoy more than having him at her side for the rest of her days, but Trygg might disagree. He might despise her for taking the choice away from him, even if death was the only other alternative.
He choked on blood and water, tiny bubbles spilling over his lips. She didn’t have much time to decide. If she waited much longer, not even she could save him.
On a miserable groan, she pulled one of his daggers loose from its sheath on his belt. The blade glinted like quicksilver in the darkness of the grotto.
“Forgive me,” she whispered, then sliced the edge of the razor-sharp steel into her wrist and held the bleeding wound to his mouth.
* * * *
Trygg’s senses came back online as if he’d been jump-started by the sun itself.
Light poured into him, warm and silky and profoundly powerful. Wave upon wave roared through his body, mending every limb and organ, infusing every cell. Bringing him back from the depths of a cold blackness that he was certain should have been his death.
Had been, he realized, as his conscious mind began piecing everything together.
The cargo ship.
The decoy shipment of Red Dragon.
The payload of hidden explosives that blew up just as he was leaping off the deck of the boat to escape Santino’s trap.
And now this.
The light.
The power.
“Sia?” He opened his eyes and blinked in the darkness of a dank stone cave.
She sat beside him on a small bed of sand, her knees bent, her face resting on her folded arms. She’d been weeping. Tears streaked her beautiful face as she lifted her head and looked over at him.
“Trygg.” His name was a breathless whisper, filled with relief. And regret.
“Where are we?” His voice was groggy with misuse and the likely gallons of salt water he’d ingested after the detonation had thrown him into the sea for God knew how long.
And then he realized what Sia’s presence beside him actually meant.
“You came after me?” It sounded like an accusation and she flinched. “Sia, what the fuck were you thinking?”
She shook her head. “Lazaro said he lost contact with you. Someone had to warn you that Santino’s boat was a trap. Someone had to try to reach you in time—”
“Not you, damn it!” He choked on the words, his lungs still waterlogged and raw. “You’re the last person I’d want to risk something as reckless as that.”
“I was the only one who could,” she replied. “The crystal took me to the boat’s location, but I was too late. It exploded just as I got there.”
He stared at this Atlantean female—this woman who was as brave as any warrior he’d ever known—and felt his chest swell with pride. And with gratitude.
A host of tender emotions swamped him, all of them centered on Sia.
He glanced at her folded hands and frowned. Her wrists were empty. “You lost your crystal.”
She shrugged. “It fell off somewhere in the water when I was bringing you here.”
“I’ll help you find it,” he offered lamely. “I’ll see to it that you get another one. If that’s what you want.”
“That’s not what I want, Trygg.” Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. She swiped at them, turning her face away from him.
He rose up, taking a moment to assess what had to be catastrophic injuries from the explosion and his crash into the sea. But he saw no marks on his body at all. He felt no aches from broken bones or bruises.
He’d never felt stronger or more powerful in his life.
And his face… Christ, even that felt different now. The familiar tug of his scar each time he moved his lips or blinked his eye was gone.
He reached up to feel for the jagged line, but it was no longer there.
His face was healed.
It only took him an instant to understand why. “You gave me your blood.”
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I didn’t know what else to do. You were injured so badly when I found you in the water and I—”
“Why did you do it?” A curse blasted out of him as the full realization of what she had done sank into his brain. He took her quivering chin on the tips of his fingers and drew her gaze back to his. “Why did you come after me, Sia?”
“Because I love you.”
All his breath left him in an astonished gust. “You shouldn’t. You should save your love for a man who’s more deserving. Someone gentler. Someone cleaner. These hands are stained with blood, Sia. They always will be. They’re not the kind of hands that should be touching you.”
“I don’t want anyone else. I choose you.” She squared her shoulders, some of the haughty, regal Atlantean pushing past the selfless, tender woman he also knew her to be. “I’ve chosen, Trygg. There is only you.”
He held her gaze, unable to resist the urge to smooth his fingers along the soft curve of her cheek. “That’s why you fed me your blood?”
“I couldn’t let you die, Trygg. Even if that meant you would live the rest of your life hating me for the gift.”
He listened without speaking, considering what it was going to mean to be bound to her forever. No other woman would be able to quench his thirst. No other woman would inflame his desire the way his blood would now call for Sia. She was a part of him irrevocably.
He stepped in close to her, craving her warmth already…always. “For most of my life, I only knew how to hate the chains that bound me. Now you’ve placed a new one on me.”
She closed her eyes, remorse filling her lovely face. “I know, Trygg. And I’m sorr—”
He silenced her with a deep, unhurried kiss. “I’m not sorry, Sia. I can’t think of any greater gift than the one you’ve given me now. Your blood. Your bond. Your love.”
A soft cry slipped past her lips. “I thought you would despise me.”
“No, Tamisia. I love you.”
He took her face between his palms and kissed her again, savoring the taste of her. Through the bond of her blood, he could feel the depth of her affection for him. Her love was a light that glowed inside her, filling his own heart with an unearthly, extraordinary warmth.
This was how it would be between them from now on, her vitality and emotion flowing inside him. Instead of holding him down, this shackle freed him.
It unleashed a staggering desire within him.
“Sia,” he murmured, drawing her against him as their kiss ignited into something neither of them could contain. “You’re mine now.”
“Yes,” she whispered against his lips. “Only yours, Trygg.”
His fangs responded as swiftly as the rest of him. Sia licked her lips, seeming to understand what he needed. Her hungered expression told him that she needed the same thing.
He eased her down onto the soft sand with him. They peeled away the damp, tattered rags of their clothing, and then Trygg was inside her, both of them moving together in a tempo as worshipful as it was urgent. There was no cooling their desire, no slowing their shared, intense release.
“Drink from me,” he murmured, the glow of his irises bathing her milky skin in warm amber light as he rocked inside her. With his eyes on hers, he bit into his own wrist, opening twin punctures in his veins. “I need to know you’ll be mine forever, my beautiful Tamisia.”
“Oh, Trygg,” she murmured, a pleasured smile curving her lips in the instant before her tongue touched his skin. “I already am.”
He tipped his head back on a groan of pure ecstasy as she closed her mouth over his wounds and began to take her fill.