Or am I?
The thought sends ice through my veins. What does a mate bond mean for a human bonded to an immortal? Do I become immortal too? Is that even possible? Or will I age and wither while he stays young and strong, forced to watch me decay until death finally claims me?
"The curse can't coexist with a mate bond. It's failing. We're both failing." My mind reels, trying to process his words through the fog of disbelief.
"If I keep you asleep, we'll both die. The magic is eating itself, eating us, trying to force what it needs. Mutual awareness. Choice."
Die? We're dying? It's insane. It's impossible. It's a lie.
"I have to wake you. Maybe soon. Before it's too late."
No. No, don't wake me. Don't make me face this. Don't make me choose.
But what if it's not a lie? What if this is what a mate bond feels like? What if this consuming, desperate need is exactly what it's supposed to be?
"If I keep you asleep, we'll both die. The magic is eating itself, eating us, trying to force what it needs. Mutual awareness. Choice. Choice from both of us. Things I can't give you while you're trapped like this."
"I have to wake you. Maybe soon. Before it's too late. But Adelaide, treasure, I'm so fucking scared. Scared you'll hate me. Scared you'll try to leave."
His voice breaks, and something in my chest breaks with it.
The bond just made it official.
"I didn't know. I thought I was protecting you. Keeping you safe. But I was killing you instead. Killing us both."
I could never leave you. Don't you understand? I'm yours. Completely, irrevocably yours. The bond didn't do that, you did. You made me love you, made me need you, made me into this broken, desperate thing that can't exist without you.
The words wash over me, and I want to reject them. Want to call him a liar. Want to believe this is just another manipulation, another way to justify what he's done to me. He talks about hoping I hate him. Hoping I kill him while wanting me to choose him.
I know when he's asleep. When he's awake. When he's agitated or calm or consumed with need.
I thought I was going insane. Thought maybe it was part of the curse, some side effect of being trapped in my own body for so long. My mind creating phantom sensations to fill the void.
The awareness. I can sense him now, even when he's not in the room. I know when he's in his study, when he's in the courtyard dealing with another prince, when he's pacing the halls. I can feel his presence like a constant hum beneath my skin. The farther he goes from me, the more panicked I feel.
But it wasn't madness. It was the bond. Connecting us in ways I didn't understand.
And the hunger. God, the hunger. That desperate, clawing need that's been building for years. I thought it was trauma bonding, thought it was my mind breaking under the weight of captivity. But it was the bond all along. The bond recognizing him as mine, demanding that I claim him as thoroughly as he's claimed me.
Except I can't claim him. I can't move, can't speak, can't do anything but lie here and feel and want and need.
The bond must be going insane. Trying to force something that the curse won't allow. Trying to create mutuality, reciprocity, choice, all the things a mate bond requires, while I'm trapped in this prison of flesh and silence.
No wonder we're dying. The magic is tearing itself apart trying to reconcile two incompatible forces.
And it's his fault. All of it. The curse, the bond, the slow death we're both facing. He did this. He poisoned me, trapped me, and then somehow, through proximity or magic or sheer possessive obsession, he bonded us together.
I should hate him for it. Should rage against the injustice of being bound forever to my captor.
But I don't. God help me, I don't.
I love him. I've loved him for years, maybe decades. The bond just gave that love a name. A purpose. A permanence that terrifies me.
Forever. That's what a mate bond means, doesn't it? Forever. Not just until death, but beyond it. Souls intertwined for eternity.
I'm stuck with him forever. The thought should fill me with horror. With despair. With the desperate need to escape.
Instead, it fills me with a dark, twisted relief.
