All we have is this. These moments between battles. These stolen hours of touch and want and hope.
And he’s wasting them on fear.
I stand. Pull on my discarded clothes. Move to the hearth, where the fire has burned low.
With a thought, I bring the flames back to life. They dance higher, brighter, responding to my mood with eager intensity.
My power grows every day, responds to threats and emotions with increasing strength. Maybe he’s right to be afraid.
Maybe the claiming would consume me the way it consumed the one before.
Or maybe—just maybe—I’m the one who can finally survive his fire.
I curl up on the couch, watching the flames dance. In the morning, we’ll train. We’ll pretend tonight didn’t change everything. He’ll try to put the walls back up and I’ll keep finding ways to tear them down.
Because I’ve tasted him now. Felt his hands on my skin. Heard my name torn from his lips in the darkness. And no amount of noble self-sacrifice is going to make me forget.
He thinks walking away protects me. Thinks that holding back the claiming keeps me safe.
He’s wrong.
Because here’s the thing about fire: it doesn’t stay contained. It spreads. It grows. It consumes everything in its path until nothing is left but ash and possibility.
We’ve already started burning.
There’s no putting this fire out now.
ELEVEN
SELENE
The smell hits me before I hear it. A hard thump on the porch, rattling the door.
Copper and decay, thick enough to coat the back of my throat. I’m halfway through my morning coffee when Drayke goes rigid beside me, nostrils flaring, eyes snapping to the front door.
He returned when the sun came up. He should’ve just stayed gone. We’ve been dancing around each other all morning—careful touches, loaded glances, neither of us quite ready to address what happened last night. The tension between us is a living thing, humming with unfinished business.
But the smell cuts through all of that.
“Stay here.”
“Like hell.” I’m already moving, following him onto the porch before he can stop me.
The deer lies on the porch. Eviscerated. Entrails dangling in wet ropes, blood pooling on the weathered wood beneath it.
But that’s not the worst part.
Carved into the hide, burned black around the edges like someone used a blowtorch: MATE.
Drayke’s whole body vibrates with barely contained fury. His eyes glow bright, pupils elongating, and when he speaks, his voice carries an inhuman resonance that makes my teeth ache.
“They were here. On my territory. At my door.” Each word drops like a stone into still water.
I study the carcass with clinical detachment. EMT training taught me to compartmentalize gore—you don’t pass those courses by falling apart at the sight of blood. “Well. That’s not ominous at all.”
He rounds on me. “This isn’t funny.”
“No, it’s not.” I meet his blazing gaze steadily. “It’s a threat. A very graphic, very obvious threat designed to scare us. And if I don’t joke about it, I’m going to—” I cut myself off.
