“Try,” she insisted.
Sloane licked his lips as he attempted to boil down the most significant shift in his life, his biology, and his eternal landscape since his birth. “We call it the Pull. It feels… like a pull. Like we can’t be separated from our consort or we’ll die. It’s wonderful. It’s also awful.”
Her dark brows drew together. “Will you? Die, I mean.”
“If exposed to your pheromones for long enough, then cut off, yes. We often waste away until infirmity or madness sets in. Usually both.” He shrugged. “There are worse deaths.”
And I’ve participated in nearly all of them,he silently added.
Cecilia sat up, depriving him of all that delicious contact. “Wait, so if I decided I wanted to be with you forever, and then one day I changed my mind, it could kill you?”
He nodded. “Affirmative.”
Cecilia stared at him with an emotion he knew well: horror. “No wonder you want to wait to take your helmet off,” she whispered.
Sloane frowned. “That’s not why I’m keeping it on. I’m not afraid of dying, Cece. I’m afraid of taking your choice from you. Because Iknowyou wouldn’t let me die. That’s the problem.”
She let out a slow, trembling breath. “You think I’d feel guilted into staying with you?”
“Yes,” he answered, stomach tightening.
“You’re a complicated man, Sloane. You don’t have any problem kidnapping me and saying I can’t leave, but you also won’t force a matebond on me, which most people wouldn’t think twice about.” Cecilia gave the center of his visor a poke with her index finger. “I don’t know why that appeals to me so much, but it does.”
The breeze pushed her hair over her shoulders. It tickled his chest as he grabbed the hand that had poked him and twined their fingers together. “Do arrants feel a type of Pull?”
“Mm, not really,” she answered, lips twisting from one side to the other. “We have a lot of stories about love at first sight, and instant attraction is definitely a thing, but I don’t think it’s anything like what you and orcs and shifters experience.”
He wasn’t surprised but he couldn’t say he wasn’t disappointed. “I see.”
He couldn’t be sure what Cecilia heard in his voice. Whatever it was, it made her expression soften. She leaned in close to cup the side of his helmet. “Hey… That doesn’t mean I feel nothing. If anything, I think arrants have a gift to give people like you. When we stay, it’s because wewantto, not because of biology or magic. It’s our choice to love you. One hundred percent.”
“Could you love me, Cece?” Sloane didn’t mean to sound so pathetic and desperate, but he did.
She was quiet for a beat. That was one of those nuances he never could’ve picked up through distant observation, the way she talked non-stop until she really had something to say. Then she took her time.
Before she could answer, he continued, “I’m a monster. More than you know. I’ve killed hundreds of people in my life, and I’m not— I was made into something that’s not right. I can’t be fixed,and even if I could be I don’t know that I’d choose it. But I’d die for you, Cece. I’ll give up everything that matters to me for you. Not just because you’re my consort, but because you’reyou.”
Her breath hitched. “Sloane…”
He lowered his head to rest it on the curve of her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
A soft hand drifted up to cradle the back of his neck. Normally, instinct would’ve seen him strike out at anyone, even a teammate, for coming so close to that vulnerable spot, but there wasn’t even a prickle of unease in him when she stroked the skin beneath his collar. She was the only one who was allowed so close to the most vulnerable part of him because he knew without a shadow of a doubt that she’d never harm him.
She was safe. She was soft. She was his.
“Don’t apologize for saying how you feel,” she gently scolded him. “I like that. Actually, I love it. I love how honest you are, baby. And in the spirit of honesty, lemme just say this: I’m not quite right in the head either. I don’t know… maybe the ways that I’m a little messed up and the ways you’re a lot messed up align, you know? I find you outrageously charming, and I know it’s fucked to say I don’t care about you killing people, but I kinda don’t because I trust your judgement. I mean, a man who values consent as much as you do has to have a solid moral compass, right?”
She let out a slow breath. Voice lowering, she continued, “Or maybe that’s just an excuse I tell myself to justify the fact that I find how dangerous you are to be so fucking sexy it makes it hard to function. I think you’re funny and earnest and sweet. I want to help you live a good life, Sloane, and I want to be a part of it.”
Sloane couldn’t catch his breath. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t do anything besides cling to her like she was a life preserver in a turbulent ocean.
Her hand fell from the back of his neck. “I have an idea, but you’ve got to let me go.”
Instantly, his arms banded around her middle. “No,” he protested, burying his visor in her neck.
A soft chuckle shook her chest. “I meant let me sit up, not let me run away, you dork.”
It still wasn’t his preference. Sloane didn’t want to release her for even a moment, but he reluctantly allowed her to arrange his limbs again. When she stood up, he tilted his head back to look up at her gilded image, perfect and windswept.
