So he stared at the grey winter sky and forced his breathing to steady. In. Out. In. Out. The rhythm of discipline, the mantra of restraint, the familiar prison of self-denial.
“Rykan?”
Her voice was soft and confused. He heard her shift in the snow beside him and felt her warmth even with the distance between them.
“Don’t.” The word came out harsh, rough-edged. “Don’t touch me right now.”
Silence stretched between them. He could feel her watching him, could imagine the expression on her face—the hurt, the uncertainty, the questions she wasn’t asking. His beast snarledat him for causing that confusion, for pulling away when she’d given herself so freely.
“You need to understand something.” He pushed himself up to a sitting position, keeping his back to her. The snow had soaked through his clothing but he barely noticed. “What just happened—it cannot happen again.”
“Why not?”
Such a simple question. Such a devastating one.
“Because I nearly—” He stopped, jaw clenching. How did he explain this? How did he tell her that he’d been a heartbeat away from bonding them together for life? That his kind didn’t take lovers casually, that what she’d offered was more than she could possibly understand?
“You nearly what?”
He heard the snow crunch beneath her boots as she rose. She wasn’t approaching him, but she wasn’t retreating either.
“We are trapped here together.” He forced the words out, each one a stone in his mouth. “Isolation creates a false sense of intimacy. You should not mistake proximity for anything more than what it is.”
“Is that what you think I’m doing?”
Her voice had changed. The confusion was still there, but beneath it lay something harder. Something that reminded him of the steel she’d shown during training, the determination that refused to yield no matter how many times she fell.
“It’s what happens.” He rose to his feet, still not facing her. “I have seen it before. Two people, trapped together, convincingthemselves they feel something that evaporates the moment the circumstances change. It is biology, nothing more. The need for connection when there are no other options.”
They were the words he needed to say—the rational, logical explanation that would protect them both from a mistake they couldn’t undo—but they felt like lies, even as he spoke them.
“Look at me.”
He didn’t move.
“Rykan. Look at me.”
Something in her tone, a command disguised as a request, made him turn.
She stood in the trampled snow, her cheeks still flushed, her hair still wild, her clothing rumpled from their entanglement. But her expression was calm. Far calmer than it had any right to be.
“You think I kissed you because you’re the only option?” She tilted her head, studying him the way she sometimes studied a training form—analyzing, assessing, searching for the weakness she could exploit. “That’s an interesting theory.”
“It is not a theory. It is?—”
“I grew up surrounded by people.” She cut him off, her voice still steady. “Servants, tutors, guards. Men who would have done anything to gain my father’s favor, including pursuing his daughter. I learned very young to recognize the difference between genuine interest and opportunistic proximity.”
He opened his mouth to respond, but she wasn’t finished.
“I’ve also spent my entire life being told what I feel. That I’m too fragile to trust my own emotions. Too sheltered to understandthe real world. Too delicate to make my own choices.” Something flickered in her eyes—anger, old and worn smooth by years of swallowing it down. “I thought you were different.”
The accusation made him wince.
“I am trying to protect you,” he growled. “You do not understand what you are inviting.”
“Then explain it to me.”
She took a step towards him. Just one, but it closed the distance between them enough that he could feel her warmth and detect the lingering traces of him on her skin. His beast purred at the scent of his marks on her, even as his rational mind screamed warnings.
