“Yours?” The word comes out breathless.
“Mine,” he confirms, and the possessive certainty in his voice should frighten me. Instead, it makes me want to close the remaining distance between us, to taste that certainty on his lips, to?—
A sound from the corridor breaks the moment. Footsteps, shuffling and uneven. Magnus moves instantly into protective position, pushing me behind him as we both focus on the door.
The footsteps pass without stopping, but the reminder of danger is enough to break the spell. Magnus steps back deliberately, though his hand lingers on my arm for a moment longer than necessary.
“We should keep moving,” he says, voice carefully controlled. “Find out what’s in the lower levels.”
I nod, not trusting my voice yet. My lips still tingle with the kiss that didn’t happen, my body still hums with want. But he’s right. We have a mission. People to save. A monster to stop.
As I download what files I can onto a portable drive, I’m aware of Magnus watching me. Not the facility, not the door—me. Like I’m something precious he needs to guard, something worth dying for.
The thought should terrify me. I’ve seen his death, know what that protection costs.
But as we prepare to go deeper into this nightmare facility, I realize something that changes everything:
I’d do the same for him. Die to protect him. Choose him over my own safety every single time.
The vision showed me his death, but it didn’t show me the whole truth—that by the time that moment comes, I’ll be just as desperate to save him as he is to save me.
Because sometime between that first meeting and this moment, between resistance and trust, between his hands on my face and almost-kisses in abandoned facilities, I’ve fallen completely, irrevocably in love with Magnus Ironwood.
And love, I’m beginning to understand, might be the one force strong enough to rewrite fate itself.
10
MAGNUS
The archive room’s dust-covered terminals cast pale blue light across Lyra’s face as she downloads the last of Crane’s files. I should be watching the door, scanning for threats, maintaining tactical awareness. Instead, I’m watching her—the way she bites her lower lip in concentration, how a strand of silver-shot auburn hair has escaped her braid to curl against her neck, the subtle shifts in her eyes as she processes each horrifying detail.
My leopard is restless, prowling just beneath my skin. It knows what I’ve been fighting since that moment in the ice when our magic merged: this woman is ours. Our mate. The one we’ve waited our entire lives to find.
And she’s walked into a trap designed specifically for her.
“Got it,” Lyra says softly, unplugging the storage device and securing it in her pack. “Everything Crane recorded about his methodology, his victims, the toxin formulas.” Her hands shake slightly as she works. “Elena will need this. To develop treatments. To understand what she’s facing when the rescued subjects arrive.”
The clinical detachment in her voice doesn’t fool me. I saw her face when she read those progress reports, watched the way her healing light flared involuntarily—her body’s instinctive response to catalogued suffering.
“We should move deeper,” I say, checking the corridor one more time. “Find where he’s keeping the prisoners.”
“Magnus.” Her hand catches my wrist, stopping me. Even through the leather of my glove, I feel the spark—storm and ice recognizing each other, reaching for that harmony we created. “The vision I just had. Crane specifically wants me. When we go deeper, when we find him... he’s going to try to separate us. Bait me with prisoners who need immediate help, force me to choose between healing them and staying safe beside you.”
I turn to face her fully, covering her hand with mine. “Then we don’t separate.”
“It won’t be that simple.”
“It is exactly that simple.” I step closer, close enough to smell the storm-rain scent of her. “We go in together. Fight together. Whatever comes, we face it side by side.”
She looks up at me, and I see fear not for herself, but for me. For what she’s seen coming. “Even if it means?—”
“Don’t.” I cup her face with one hand, forcing her to hold my gaze. “I told you before. If I have to choose between a long life without you and a short one protecting you, that’s no choice at all.”
“That’s a terrible deal for you.”
“It’s the only deal I’ll accept.” My thumb brushes across her cheekbone, and her eyes flutter half-closed at the contact. “Stop trying to negotiate me out of caring about you. It’s not going to work.”
The moment stretches between us, heavy with everything we’re not saying. Then she takes a shaky breath and steps back, breaking the contact that makes thinking clearly impossible.
