He came back.
Because I called for him.
Something in my chest—something I don't want to name—surges at the sight of him.
"I tried." His voice is barely human anymore, all gravel and smoke and dragon-roar. "Chained myself to the wall. Iron that's held dragons for centuries, millennia even." He shudders, a full-body tremor. "But your scent—I could smell you through three floors of stone. Could feel you suffering through the bond. And I heard you?—"
He cuts himself off with a snarl that echoes off the walls.
"Tell me to leave." The words grind out like they're being torn from his chest. "Tell me to go and I'll find a way. I'll tear off my own arm if I have to. Just tell me what you want, Kess."
What I want.
I want to not want him. Want my body to stop betraying me. Want to go back to the simple hatred I felt when I walked into that grove with a knife hidden in my hair.
But I also want him on top of me. Inside me. Want his hands on my skin and his teeth in my throat and his knot filling the void that's driving me insane.
"I hate this," I hear myself say. "Hate that my body wants you. Hate that I can't stop thinking about the altar, about what you—what we—" I can't finish. "I hate that you're the only thing that's ever made my heat bearable."
He flinches like I've struck him. But he doesn't move. Doesn't close the distance. Just stands there in the ruined doorway, shaking with the effort of holding himself back.
"I know," he says. "I hate it too."
"Then why are you here?"
"Because you were hurting and you called for me." The words come out raw, scraped bloody. "I could feel every second of it. And I couldn't just sit in the dark and let you suffer when I could do something about it."
"So this is pity?"
"No." He takes one step into the room. Just one. "This is me offering. And if you say no, I'll walk back out and find something stronger to chain myself to. But if you say yes?—"
"If I say yes, what?"
"Then I'll give you what you need." He's closer now. When did he get so close? "Whatever you need. However you need it."
We're both barely holding on.
"The first time I was chained to an altar," I say. "I couldn't choose."
"I know."
He's close enough to touch now. The heat radiating off him matches the fever burning under my skin.
"Last chance," he says, his voice dropped to something low and rough and barely controlled. "Tell me to leave. Tell me to go and I'll go."
I should preserve what's left of my pride. My anger. My conviction that I came here to kill him.
But my body is screaming in pain. The emptiness is unbearable. And underneath all the hatred, there's the memory I can't shake: his arms around me after, gentle in the aftermath of violence, holding me like I was precious instead of prey.
"I can't do this alone," I hear myself say, the words dragged out of me with hooks. "I tried. I can't. And I hate that I can't, hate that I need?—"
"I know." He closes the distance, one hand cupping my face, surprisingly gentle. "I know you hate it. Hate me. That's fine. Hate me all you want. Just let me help you through this."
His thumb traces my cheekbone. His eyes are still black, still beast, but there's something almost human in the way he's looking at me.
"You can go back to wanting me dead tomorrow," he says, a ghost of dark humor in his wrecked voice. "Tonight, just let me?—"
I kiss him.
