JUNE
Sunlight filters through the curtains, warm across my face, and for a moment, I just lie here, suspended in that hazy space between sleep and waking. My body feels heavy and satisfied. There’s a comforting ache between my thighs that has me blushing even though no one’s watching.
I reach out instinctively, palm pressing against cool sheets besides me, and my stomach dips. Carter’s gone. Again. Just like before, I’ve woken up alone without?—
My fingers brush paper.
I roll over, squinting against the light, and find a folded note propped against my phone on the nightstand. I grab it and push up onto one elbow, sheets pooling around my waist.
The paper is slightly creased, like it’s been handled too many times. When I unfold it, I recognize Carter’s handwriting immediately from last night, messy and slanted.
But this isn’t the same poem from last night. He finished it.
You make the quiet louder—the kind I used to drown out.
Now I want to sit in it,if you’re sitting there too.
Before you, I was runningfrom a silence that felt like drowning.
Now I think I could stay still forever,if staying still meant staying with you.
My heart flutters in my chest, beating faster, harder, a rhythm that seems to pulse his name.Carter. Carter. Carter.
I press the paper to my chest and just breathe for a moment, inhaling the lingering scent of him in my sheets, as though he’s somehow seeped into the fabric, into the mattress, into me. I’m smiling so wide my cheeks hurt, and I don’t even care that I probably look ridiculous lying here grinning at a piece of paper like it contains the secrets of the universe.
Maybe the secret is just this—someone really seeing you, and putting it into words you’ll carry forever.
The last thing I remember is falling asleep in his arms, his body still buried deep inside me, knotted together in a way I’d only ever read about. I’d never experienced knotting before. Never let anyone close enough to try. I always assumed it would be painful, clinical, some biological function to endure rather than enjoy.
I was so wrong.
It was intimate in a way that made me feel cracked open. Vulnerable and safe at the same time. The stretch and fullness, yes, but more than that—the way our bodies locked together, the bond humming between us, connecting us so deeply that I felt his heartbeat as if it were my own.
Even now, hours later, I feel him as if he’s still part of me somehow.
Which is when the panic hits.
My hand flies to my neck, fingers pressing against the tender skin just above my collarbone. The bite mark is there—raised and slightly warm, unmistakable. Carter’s mating mark.
Oh, shit.
I sit up so fast the room spins. The sheet falls away, and I’m suddenly very aware of being naked, of the evidence of last nightscattered across the floor in the form of clothes and the lingering scent of sex.
Not only did I sleep with him, but I also asked him to bite me.
What was Ithinking?
My fingers trace the mark again, and even that light touch sends warmth flooding through me. A tug in my chest, an awareness that tells me exactly where he is even though I can’t see him. Downstairs, maybe. The bond stretches between us like an invisible thread. A low hum of want has me pressing my thighs together.
Our bond is permanent.
A mating mark isn’t something you can undo. It’s not a tattoo you can laser off or a ring you can remove when things get complicated. But a bond that ties you to someone for the rest of your life, soul-deep and unbreakable.
And I asked for it. Begged for it, actually, if I’m being honest. I remember the words tumbling out of my mouth between kisses, desperate and certain:Do it. I want it so badly.
At the time, it felt right. Inevitable. Like we were always going to end up here.
But now, in the cold light of morning, reality crashes in.
