“That is not?—”
“Don’t,” I cut in, my voice cracking now, raw and hoarse and ugly with adrenaline and terror and rage. “Do not try to soft-sell this like it’s romantic fate instead of a biological trapdoor you just fell through that I didn’t even know existed.”
His hands curl into fists at his sides.
Not in anger.
In restraint.
“I am not happy about this,” he says tightly.
“Oh, I’m so relieved,” I spit. “Truly. That makes me feel so much better about the part where you just told me your instincts think I belong to you.”
“You do not belong to me,” he says immediately.
The words come out sharp.
Absolute.
“I said the jalshagar identified you as mine,” he continues, his voice low and controlled and vibrating with something dangerous he is very clearly keeping in a cage. “Those are not the same thing.”
My laugh comes out broken.
“That is the most hairsplitting bullshit I’ve heard in my entire life.”
He takes a slow step backward instead of forward, putting more space between us, not less.
“I am telling you what my biology is doing,” he says. “Not what I believe you are.”
My chest heaves.
My arm throbs.
My head is pounding.
“Then what do you believe,” I demand.
He doesn’t answer right away.
He looks at me.
Really looks at me.
Not like prey.
Not like property.
Like a person who just survived something unspeakable and is now sitting on a cot bleeding and furious and trying not to fall apart.
“You are a human woman who ran a restaurant,” he says quietly. “Who told a mob boss to go fuck himself. Who tried to get strangers out of a burning building instead of saving herself. Who does not deserve any of this.”
My throat tightens so fast it almost closes.
“And what,” I whisper, “am I to you.”
His jaw flexes.
“My problem,” he says bluntly. “Because my instincts have decided to imprint on you like an idiot dog, and I am now responsible for making sure that does not ruin your life.”
