Emotionless. Too still.
So she rushed on, words tripping over themselves.
“I didn’t know what else to do; you weren’treacting. You pretended everything between us didn’t matter, and that was the only thing that made you have feelings like a normal being and?—”
He shook his head.
Her stomach plunged. “I know, I know. It was stupid, immature, manipulative, and?—”
“I’m relieved,” he said quietly.
Zara stopped mid-ramble. “You…what?”
His shoulders dropped, tension unclenching. “I thought I’d already lost you, that I’d waited too long. That he got there first.” His voice softened, cracked, honest in a way she’d never heard from him. “Knowing it was all pretend…I can breathe again.”
Her heart squeezed, suddenly too full.
“Oh,” she whispered, and it was all she could manage.
He stepped closer, slow, deliberate, giving her a chance to pull back.
She didn’t.
“I didn’t know how to make you see me,” she said, voice small. “Not just the girl who reports to you. Not just the younger colleague you have to guide and keep out of trouble.”
“I never saw you as someone I had to manage,” Hektor murmured. “I saw you as the one person I shouldn’t want, because you’re young, because we work together…and the only woman I couldn’t stop wanting anyway.”
Heat wrapped around her ribs, not fiery but warm and steady.
“Zara,” he said, voice low, “no more pretending. Not with other males. Not with indifference. Not with distance.”
She nodded, breath catching. “Okay.”
He lifted her chin, thumb brushing her lower lip, a question, not a demand.
“Can I?”
She almost laughed because of how ridiculous, after all this, that he’d finally ask.
“Yes,” she breathed.
The kiss was not the fevered, accidental one from before. This one was slow, anchored, reverent, like he’d been waiting his entire dragon-cursed lifetime to do it properly.
Zara closed the smallest distance between them, her fingers catching lightly at the front of his shirt.
When the kiss finally ended, his forehead rested against hers. He wasn’t trying to pull her closer or let her go; it was like he just needed that nearness a little longer.
She could feel it in the quiet between their breaths: not possession, not confusion, but the soft, steady relief of finally being seen.
“Just like that,” she searched his face, disbelief still wrinkling her brow. “You’re okay?”
“Yes,” Hektor exhaled. “Mostly because it was…hell. Seeing you with him. Wanting each smile and laugh you gave him that wasn’t mine.”
Her breath hitched at the quiet confession.
“And now that none of it was real,” he continued, voice rough but lighter than she’d ever heard it, “I can finally stop pretending I’m fine and…move on.”
She raised a brow. “So, you’re good at compartmentalizing.”
