“You think I didn’t feel it?”he snaps.“The pull?Every time your emotions spike, it reaches for you.For us.You think I don’t know your choices matter?”
I take a shaky breath.“Maybe my choices are the only thing I still own.”
He stops, close enough now that I can feel the cold radiating from his body.It reaches for my heat, wrapping around it without quite touching.
“What happened to you?”he asks suddenly, voice lower.“Before us.Before this place.Before the mark.”
The images rise again, smoke, flame, the sound of wood screaming as it burns.
“Nothing worth telling,” I whisper.
He doesn’t move.“Tessa.”
There’s something about the way he says my name.It slides under my skin, past all my defenses.Maybe I’m tired of carrying it alone.Maybe Hannah cracked me open earlier and I haven’t quite sealed back up.
Either way, the words come.
I tell him.
The fights.The fear.The closet.The fire.The way my father looked at my mother as the flames climbed the walls.The smell of burning hair.The cold air outside when the firefighters pulled me through broken glass.My mother’s silence.My father’s sentence.The years with my best friend’s family, where gentleness felt foreign and kindness felt suspicious.
The pull north.The restless dreams of ice and dark water.The way Alaska called my name long before I ever heard of the Kings.
He doesn’t interrupt.Not once.
When I finally run out of words, my throat feels raw.Tears cling to my lashes.The room smells faintly of soap, old wood, and his cool ozone scent.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
The simple sincerity of it hits harder than any apology I’ve ever heard.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I manage.
His gaze rakes over my face, searching.“I’m still sorry.You deserved safety, warmth, people who protected you.Instead, you got fire and blood and a father who should have been dragged into the light centuries ago.”
A broken laugh escapes me.“You sound angry.”
“Of course I’m angry.”His fingers curl into fists.“I want to rip the past apart for touching you.I want to rip the future apart for threatening you.But all I can do is stand here and hope you let me stay close enough to help when it tries again.”
Something inside me yields.
The mark flares, not in pain this time, but in recognition of choice, of pull, of a path diverging and waiting for my footsteps.
“Vex...”I whisper.
He steps in, erasing the space between us.
Cold radiates from his chest.My heat rushes to meet it, skin prickling, lungs straining.His hand lifts, hesitates near my cheek, then finally settles there, palm cool, thumb brushing away a tear I didn’t realize had fallen.
“You terrify me,” he admits, voice barely above a breath.“Not because of what follows you, but because of what you make me want.”
“What do I make you want?”I ask, the question spilling out before pride can stop it.
His smile is sharp and broken.“Everything.”
His mouth finds mine.
The kiss isn’t careful.It’s not sweet.The emotion beneath it is too raw for that.His lips claim, demanding and hungry, the chill of his skin searing against my heat.My fingers fist in his shirt, dragging him closer, needing more contact, more of him, more of the cold that somehow makes me feel burning and alive.
