Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sophia
By the time the sun has climbed high enough to turn the curtains pale gold, I’ve lost track of how long I’ve been lying here just… feeling alive inside my own skin.
Not in a bad way.
My body hums with a low, pleasant ache—hips, thighs, the muscles along my back. My mouth feels bruised in the best way. There’s a faint scrape on my shoulder where his stubble rasped when he buried his face there and shook apart.
My nervous system offers a familiar interpretation: post-adrenaline tremor, possible overload, probable crash coming.
My actual state: grounded. Sorted. Full.
And in love.
That part doesn’t feel new anymore. It feels… confirmed. Like finally seeing the pattern that was obvious all along.
The other new part is stranger: I let him see me. And he let me see him back.
I roll onto my side, facing the space where he slept. The impression of his body is still in the mattress—a shallow hollow in the shape of a man who used to sleep like prey and somehow decided he could rest here.
He’s gone now. The clock on my phone says 8:10 a.m. The sanctuary doesn’t pause because I had soul-bending sex-adjacent intimacy.
He let me hold him afterward. He let me kiss his hands. He let himself be seen.
The memory makes something tight and bright twist low in my chest—wonder, maybe. Or the quiet terror of realizing how much his trust means to me.
I pick up my notebook from the bedside table and flip it open.
The page where I wroteI love himdoesn’t look unhinged in daylight. It looks inevitable.
Under it, in smaller writing from last night when I got up to pee:He trusted me with Marcellus. He let me see the worst thing and stayed.
I add:We moved the line. I’m not afraid of wanting him.
My body does a self-check: heart steady, hands warm, breathing calm. No panic. No overload spike. Just… yes.
The shower helps. Hot water, steam, predictable sensory input. My brain arranges last night’s emotions into neat compartments while the water drums a rhythm on my back.
By the time I pull on jeans, a soft T-shirt, and a thin cardigan, my hunger finally cuts through the mental haze.
The walk to the dining hall feels different today. Not lighter. Morealigned.
Thirty steps from my cabin to the gravel bend. Forty to the first glimpse of the arena rail. Thirty-five to the dining hall door.
The numbers soothe me, but this morning they feel less like coping and more like the architecture of a world I’m choosing to stay in.
Inside the dining hall: chaos, warmth, noise. Sanctuary normal.
Varro is impossible to miss—towering over a waffle maker he absolutely shouldn’t be trusted with. A small girl is staring at him with wide eyes. He hands her a perfectly round waffle with ceremonial gravity, as if he’s presenting a legionary medal.
She squeals. Varro smiles—tiny, rare, painfully earnest.
I grab a tray and enter the line. Plate. Toast. Fruit. Tea. My hands line everything at right angles without thinking.
I’m about to sit at a small empty table when I hear an eruption of laughter near the front of the room—kids, delighted, unselfconscious.
My stomach does that thing again. Recognition. Warm. Sharp. Certain.
