“I should’ve done it sooner.”
He pressed the warm cloth to her side again and hissed softly as if the pain were his, not hers.
“Why?” she asked, voice barely above a breath. “Why do I feel this way around you?”
He swallowed hard, jaw tight. His hand hovered near her ribs, uncertain — and then slowly settled.
“Because you’re mine,” he whispered. “And I’m yours. Even if I never deserved you.”
Her breath caught. My chest tightened.
I’d never seen Jisoo like this. Not once in all our centuries together. Not even when his wings were stripped and the heavens cast him out. That pain didn’t compare to this… whatever this was blooming between them now.
“You don’t have to be afraid of me,” he added, softer this time. “But I’ll be terrified of losing you.”
Minji raised a trembling hand and touched his cheek.
“You’re not what I thought,” she said.
He leaned into her palm, eyes fluttering shut.
“I’m not what I thought either,” he murmured.
The bond between them pulsed — soft, golden, like a candle lit in a room full of ghosts. And I knew.
He’d burn for her.
And if anyone tried to take her again — he’d burn the world.
Not all flames consume.Some heal.Some guide.
And some, like Jisoo’s — when finally claimed — become the light a soul never knew it needed.
--------???--------
The night after the rescue felt too still. Too quiet.
The three of them — Seori, Minji, and Yuna — were finally safe, resting in the abandoned fae temple we’d turned into a sanctuary.
But peace wasn’t peace when your soul was screaming.
And Taeyang’s soul… was on fire.
He stood just outside the archway, shoulders tense, knuckles white around the hilt of his sword. The crescent moon bathed him in cold light, but the heat rippling off his skin came from within — a war not fought with weapons, but with identity. With destiny.
With desire.
He hadn’t looked at Yuna once since we’d escaped.
But I knew better.
“She’s not mine,” he rasped as I stepped up beside him. “Shecan’tbe mine.”
“You can lie to yourself all you want,” I said quietly, “but you can’t lie to the mark.”
His hand pressed flat against his chest, where the faint glow had reappeared again — the bond flaring when she smiled in her sleep. When she called his name. When she touched his arm without even realizing what it did to him.
“I’m a berserker, Rheon,” he hissed. “You know what thatmeans.What I was made for.”
