No brushing past each other in narrow spaces. No absentminded hand at her back. No fingers grazing her wrist when he handed her a tablet. No late-night proximity that blurred into something dangerous just because it was familiar.
The third rule was the hardest.
No emotional shorthand.
No looks that said everything without words. No shared silences that were like understanding instead of distance. No half-sentences, no unfinished thoughts, no letting him fill in whatshe didn’tsay.
She took that away deliberately.
Because if she was a risk, she could not also be a refuge.
The Brand didn’t likeit.
She felt it almost immediately, apressure beneath her skin that had nothing to do with pain and everything to do with awareness. It wasn’t heat. It wasn’t ache. It was a constant, low-level insistence, like something pressing outward from inside her chest, demanding resolution that nevercame.
It woke her at night.
It followed her through the endlessdays.
Sometimes it settled behind her breastbone like a burden. Other times it threaded itself along her spine, ahum that made it hard to concentrate if she let herself notice it for toolong.
She didn’t tell him.She didn’t tell anyone.
Alaric noticed anyway.
She could see it in the way his restraint sharpened to something almost surgical. He didn’t unravel. He didn’t soften. He didn’t reach.He became colder.More precise.More dangerous.
Meetings ended faster. Decisions landed harder. People stopped testing himentirely, as if some instinct had warned them that the margin for error had disappeared.
He slept less. She knew that without asking. She saw it in the tightness around his eyes, in the way he went still for half a second too long when someone interruptedhim.
He didn’t touch her.Not once.That was the worst part.Not because she wanted him to break the rules. She didn’t. Not really.But because restraint, on him, looked like suffering worn as discipline. And she could see it, even when no one elsedid.
They passed each other in hallways and paused without meaning to. Not long enough to be obvious. Just long enough to register the absence.
Once, she opened her mouth to say his name and stopped herself before the sound couldform.
Once, he reached out, his hand stopping inches from her arm before he caught himself. His fingers curled into a fist and dropped back to his side as if he’d never moved atall.
She pretended not to notice.She had to.Because noticing would mean acknowledging how close they were to breaking something neither of them could afford tolose.
The days stretched.A week passed.Then another.
Bjorn remained alive, suspended in that careful, monitored in-between that made everything else provisional. Conversations lowered when his name came up. Decisions carried an undercurrent of waiting.
Sera did her job.She did it well.She did it with a calm that made people trust her and a distance that made them unsure how to read her. She answered questions about access and systems and residue paths as if her heart weren’t bruised beneath herribs.
At night, she lay awake in her own bed, the Brand pressing and pressing, and told herself this was necessary. Of course, necessary didn’t mean easy.Necessary didn’t mean survivable.It meant chosen.
The breaking point came quietly.Of course itdid.
She was already in bed, ashort slip clinging to her skin, nothing beneath it, the sheets tangled around her legs as she stared up into the dark. Sleep wouldn’t come. It hadn’t for nights. The Brand ached relentlessly, adeep, pulsing awareness that left her restless, her body too aware of what it was being denied.
She sensed him before she heard him. Not a sound. Not a knock.
A presence.
The door opened.Alaric filled the frame, tall and solid and unmistakably himself. His expression unreadable. His eyes locked on hers as if he’d been holding himself together by the thinnest margin ofwill.
