“When Blade carried you out of my room the other night...”I begin, then trail off, unsure how much of that is mine to ask about.
Her expression softens instantly.“Yeah?”
“You called him your mate.”
Color rises in her cheeks, but she doesn’t look away.“I did.”
“What does that...mean?For you?For him?”
She blows out a breath, watching it fog the air.“It means he’s mine and I’m his.On a level that makes marriage look like a polite handshake.It’s instinct, bond, choice, all tangled together.It means the idea of losing him feels worse than dying, and he’d probably say the same.It’s...intense.”
“And you’re okay with that?”I ask.
She laughs quietly.“I didn’t say I wasn’t terrified.But I am okay with it.Because for the first time in my life, I’m not alone.I have him.I have this place.I have you.”
The last few words land heavy in my chest.
“You barely know me,” I say.
Her gaze sharpens.“I know enough.I know you stayed when you could’ve run.I know you turned into a human lightning rod during that meeting instead of letting them talk around you.And you keep looking at Vex like he’s going to hurt you and save you in the same breath.”
Heat crawls up my throat.“That obvious?”
“To anyone with eyes, yeah.”
I exhale slowly, the weight of my past pressing against the inside of my ribs.Maybe it’s the cold, or the endless stretch of sky, or the way Hannah’s looking at me, open, patient, without judgment.Either way, the words begin to rise.
“My family wasn’t good,” I say.“Not good people.My father...he did things.To people.To us.”
Hannah’s fingers brush my arm, silently urging me on.
“He used to say the world owed him.My mother believed him.They were both mean in different ways.She was cold.He was fire.”The word sits bitter on my tongue.“When I was eight, they had one of their fights.Screaming, smashing things.I hid in the closet with a blanket and a flashlight and a book I’d already read four times.”
My chest tightens, but the images come anyway.
Smoke.
Heat.
Sirens in the distance.
“I smelled the smoke first,” I whisper.“Thought they’d burnt dinner again.Then it got thicker.The door handle turned hot.Someone was pounding on our front door, shouting.I stayed where I was because hiding always worked before.”
My eyes blur.The snow in front of my boots goes double.
“The fire started in the kitchen,” I say.“Spread so fast.By the time I opened the closet door, the hallway was full of smoke.I couldn’t breathe.I crawled.Flames were already on the ceiling.He...he locked the front door before he set it.Trapped her inside.Trapped both of us.”
Hannah’s hand finds mine, squeezes tight.
“I don’t remember how I got out,” I go on.“One of the firefighters said they found me near a back window, half-conscious.My mother didn’t make it.My father did.He went to prison, but that never felt like enough.”
The tears spill over.I let them.They burn hotter than the mark ever has.
“I went to live with my best friend’s family after that,” I say.“They were kind.Normal.They gave me a room, a bed, a place at their table.They never made me feel like a burden.But no matter how safe I was, there was always this...pull.A feeling in my bones.North.Cold.Mountains.Alaska.It didn’t make sense.”
“Until now,” Hannah murmurs.
“Until now,” I echo.“Until a giant bear-shifter President and a vampire VP walked into my shitty little life and told me the mark on my shoulder is tied to some ancient monster under the ice.”
