“No,” Malrik says simply. “You’re not.”
The certainty in his voice makes something twist in my chest. I finally turn to look at him, taking in the way shadows cling to his shoulders like they can’t bear to let him go, the silver eyes that see too much.
“What do you want, Malrik?”
He steps closer, close enough that I have to tilt my head back to maintain eye contact. “I felt it too.”
My breath catches. “Felt what?”
“The bond locking. The ache of being outside it.” His voice drops lower, more intimate. “The way it felt like watching the door close on something you didn’t know you wanted until it was gone.”
The words hit like a punch to the gut. “Yeah, well,” I manage, my usual grin feeling more like a grimace, “you don’t seem the type to come in your pants from someone else’s orgasm.”
I expect him to flinch. To step back. To give me the distance I’m begging for without actually asking.
Instead, he says, “And yet here I am.”
I stop breathing entirely.
The air between us shifts, thickening with possibilities I’ve been shoving down for weeks. Months, maybe. The way his eyes linger on my mouth when he thinks I’m not looking. The careful distance he maintains, like he’s afraid of what might happen if he gets too close.
“I don’t know what to do with all of this,” I admit, the words scraping my throat raw. “With her. With you. With any of it.”
“You don’t have to know,” he says, stepping closer. “You just have to stop running.”
Something breaks inside me. It’s not clean, not pretty, but like ice cracking under too much pressure.
I surge forward, closing the distance between us, and kiss him.
It’s not gentle. It’s angry and desperate and too honest, tasting like all the words I’ve been swallowing for months. For a heartbeat, he goes perfectly still, and I think I’ve made a catastrophic mistake.
The bond between Kaia and I pulses once in my chest. A reminder of what I can’t have, that she chose someone else—
Then his hand cups my jaw, holding me in place as he deepens the kiss with a precision that steals my breath. The bond’s ache fades, smothered by something else entirely. Something that’s just mine. It’s not rushed or frantic like mine was. It’s deliberate. Devastating. Like he’s been thinking about this for a very long time.
I fumble, overwhelmed by the sheerintentbehind his touch. The way he’s not just kissing me butclaimingsomething, staking a quiet flag in territory I didn’t know was disputed.
He walks me back until my shoulders hit the stone wall, but it’s not about dominance. It’s about grounding me. Anchoring me to something solid when everything else feels like it’s spinning apart.
“If you’re going to walk away again,” I breathe against his mouth, “do it now.”
His silver eyes meet mine, and something shifts there—decision, maybe, or surrender.
“No,” he says quietly. “Not this time.”
The kiss that follows is different. Slower. Deeper. I can taste the promise on his tongue, feel it in the way his fingers threadthrough my hair. My chaos magic responds, sparking between us in little bursts of light that make the shadows dance.
His shadows reach for mine, twining together like they’ve been waiting for permission. The sensation is intoxicating, not just physical contact but something deeper, more fundamental. Like recognizing a piece of yourself you didn’t know was missing.
I arch into him, desperate for more contact, more connection, moreanything. His mouth finds my throat, and I make a sound that’s embarrassingly close to a whimper.
“Finn,” he murmurs against my skin, and the way he says my name, like it’s important, like it matters, nearly undoes me completely.
My hands fist in his shirt, pulling him closer even though there’s no space left between us. Heat builds where our bodies press together, the kind of tension that makes breathing optional and thinking impossible.
He lifts his head to look at me, and what I see in his expression makes my heart stutter. Want, yes, but something else too. Something that looks dangerously like care.
“We should—” I start, but he silences me with another kiss, softer this time but no less devastating.
