“Look at me.” His command was rough, urgent.
I forced my eyes open, my vision hazy. His face was a mask of fierce concentration, lips parted, attention fixed on me. His thumb pressed down hard.
The coil snapped. Pleasure detonated, white-hot and shattering. It ripped through me in violent, pulsing waves, stealing my breath, my sight, my very thoughts. My body clamped around his fingers, as I shook, a raw, continuous cry pulled from my throat. He held me through it, his arm an iron band, his name the only word on my lips.
The waves subsided, leaving me boneless, trembling, held up only by him and the wall. He slowly withdrew his fingers, bringing them to his lips. His eyes never left mine as he sucked them clean, a dark, deliberate act that sent a fresh, weak throb through me.
The control was seeping back in, but it was fractured. I could see the cracks. And in those cracks, I saw something that looked like awe. And fear.
Then the truth came crashing back.
The sanctuaries. The blood. The grief in his voice when he spoke of his mother. The weight of everything he’d confessed—everything I was still trying to understand. The wounds he’d carved into the world—wounds whose full cost I didn’t yet know.
I pulled back. Not hard. Not angry. Just enough to put space between us. I shouldn’t have donethat.
Not when everything between us had fractured open. Not when the truth was still bleeding.
But the frustration, the fury, the grief, the way he looked at me—it had swallowed reason whole.
This wasn’t regret. Not exactly. I didn’t regret the way my body had answered him. I didn’t regret the way his name had torn from my throat like a prayer.
I should not have closed the distance.
I needed time. Time to sit with what he had confessed. Time to untangle the sanctuaries from the man holding me. The blood from the grief in his voice when he spoke of his mother. The monster from the wounded son. I thought I knew him. I thought I understood the harsh edges and the darkness beneath the charm. Now I wasn’t sure. There were parts of him I had never seen. Choices he had made before me. Wounds he had carved into the world that I did not yet know how to measure. And I had just handed him something vulnerable—something raw—before I decided what he truly was to me.
It hadn’t been a mistake. But it had been reckless.
He didn’t reach for me again. Didn’t argue. Didn’t tease. He only nodded once, jaw tightening as he shifted his weight away—giving me room without being asked. The space he gave me felt deliberate. Hard-won.
“I’m still… working through everything you told me,” I said, words tumbling out too fast. “It’s a lot, Alaric. More than I know what to do with yet. But—” I exhaled, steadying myself. “I don’t want it to always be like before. All sharp words and silence. I don’t want this… this tension between us to be the only thing we have.”
The air stretched tight between us, filled with salt and the weight of everything unsaid.
For a long beat, he only studied me. Then his mouth curved—wry, but soft at the edges.
“Well,” he said carefully, “if you wanted less tension, starting a fight with me wasn’t exactly the best way to go about it.”
I huffed a laugh, rolling my eyes. “You know what I mean.”
His gaze softened further, but he didn’t step closer. Didn’t push. Just gave me the smallest, crooked smile. “I’ll take what I can get.”
Before I could think better of it, I reached out and let my fingers brush his. His hand turned instinctively, calloused palm opening beneath mine.I told myself it was just tension. Just too many truths pressed into too little space. But some instincts don’t quiet so easily.
Alaric's words still thundered through me—a tide that refused to recede—echoing in every hollow place I’d tried to keep protected. A vow from a monster. A confession from a man.
I cared for him. Stars help me, I did. In the short span since our paths had crossed, I’d seen flashes of tenderness beneath the cruelty, guilt beneath the bravado. Even after the truths he confessed, the blood he could never wash from his hands, I still cared. I wanted to understand him. I wanted to believe there was something worth saving.
And that terrified me.
How could I know what this was supposed to feel like when my whole life had been carved from duty and obedience and lies? No one had ever given me love without chains. No one had ever asked what I wanted.
The truth of who Alaric was hadn’t come from his own mouth—not at first.
I’d heard it from Veyrion, of all people, his voice steady as he named the pirate Alaric had once been. The sanctuaries he desecrated. The wounds he carved into the world.
Then I heard it from Alaric himself. Not hurled as accusation. Not twisted into warning. Confessed—raw and shaking and unguarded.
When I saw him alive in Skeldrhall, relief struck me so hard it left me reeling.
