If he feels it, he feels it.
If he doesn’t, I am still here—ember-eyed, midnight-haired, palms bright with a magic that will not apologize for speaking in my voice.
I was born from starlight and mercy. Tonight I learn the other truth:
I am also made of thunder.
You’re Mine, Whether You Like It or Not
Taeyang
The Summer palace was too quiet.
Not peace—pressure. The kind of hush that presses on your eardrums until you hear your own pulse. Moonlight crawled across marble floors in stained-glass colors, telling histories I would never kneel to. Runes murmured along the cornices, old as spite.
None of it mattered.
Her scent cut through everything—honeysuckle after rain, wild and bright—and my mark answered like flint to steel. Heat flared beneath my ribs, mean and relentless. By the time I reached her door, the bond was a riot under my skin, loud enough I thought the guards might hear it.
I should have turned back.
I didn’t.
The door stood ajar like the palace itself wanted to be brave. I slipped inside. Warmth met me—green, humid, alive. Vines climbed the carved posts; petals slept with their faces tilted toward the balcony as if waiting for her breath. She stood there, bare feet pale against stone, a fall of dark-brown hair braided loose and heavy down her back, silk the color of crushed violets clinging to every place my hands remembered. Moonlight found her and chose her, and my mark went molten.
She stilled without turning.
“Taeyang.”
“I shouldn’t be here,” I rasped.
“But you are.”
She faced me—and ruin learned a new name. Those ember eyes caught the light and threw it back as warmth, not glare; a fire meant for hands. The sight hit like a blade and a benediction.
“You lied to me,” I said, the words iron-edged. “You let me fall without telling me who you were.”
“And you ran,” she shot back, steady in the places I had tried to shake. “When I needed you.”
“I had to.” My voice sharpened. “If I stayed, I would have destroyed everything—including you.”
“You already did,” she whispered, wet bright at the corners of her eyes.
The last of my restraint broke. I crossed the room in a heartbeat and caged her against me, one hand at her waist, the other at the nape where her pulse lived. The bond surged, vicious and sweet, snapping into place like a dislocated shoulder righted by pain. Her breath hitched; mine vanished.
“I tried to drown this,” I said into her hair, the words hot against her temple. “Buried it under training and fury and distance. But you linger, Yuna. In every room. In every quiet. You undo me.”
Her fingers bunched in my shirt, knuckles white.
“And now?”
“Now I burn.” I pressed my forehead to her and kissed her.
It wasn’t gentle.
It was hungry, claiming, the kind of kiss that ends arguments and starts wars. She gasped and I caught it, swallowed it, chased it. The balcony stone cooled her spine as I eased her back; the vines at our flanks flared with bud and bloom, as if the garden decided to witness. Her mouth opened under mine and I forgot how to be cautious.
“You’re mine,” I growled against her throat, tasting the heat of her skin, the pulse that leapt for me. “Whether you like it or not.”
