CHAPTER TEN
The jungle closed around Baylin like a familiar embrace—humid air, dense vegetation, the constant hum of insects and distant bird calls. He should have felt at ease here. Wilderness was what he knew. What he was built for.
Instead, his mind kept circling back to the soft press of lips against his own.
A mistake,he’d called it. The word tasted like ash in his mouth even now, an hour later, as he moved silently through the undergrowth. It wasn’t a mistake. That was the problem. It had felt like the opposite of a mistake—like something clicking into place, like finding a key he hadn’t known he’d been searching for.
Mate,his beast growled, and it was getting harder and harder to dismiss his instincts.
He paused at the base of a massive tree, pressing his palm against the rough bark while he steadied his breathing. His heart rate was still elevated. Still responding to the memory of her facetilting up towards his, those blue-gold eyes full of wonder and curiosity and trust.
She had kissed him.
He had been around females before. He understood attraction, but he’d always maintained control, always kept that part of himself carefully leashed.
With Liora, his control had shattered like glass.
One touch of her lips and he’d wanted to pull her closer, to deepen the kiss, to taste her properly. The sound that had escaped his throat—low, hungry, possessive—still echoed in his memory. He’d scared himself with the intensity of it. And when he’d seen the confusion on her face, the hurt when he’d called it a mistake...
He pushed away from the tree and continued moving, forcing himself to focus on the hunt. She needed food. Real food, not the preserved supplies she’d been surviving on. He could do this for her. He could channel whatever was happening in his chest into something useful.
The jungle here was different from the mountain territories of his youth, lush and verdant rather than cold and barren. The tower sat at the heart of something ancient, a place where the land itself seemed to pulse with hidden power. He’d felt it the moment he entered the region. A resonance in his bones, a whisper at the edge of his hearing.
A rustle in the undergrowth ahead caught his attention. He dropped into a crouch, all thoughts of the kiss momentarily pushed aside as he let his beast rise to the surface. His senses sharpened, tracking scents and movement in the shadows between the trees.
There. A plump four-legged creature, its stocky body covered in iridescent scales that caught the filtered sunlight. It moved cautiously through the ferns, unaware of the predator watching from upwind.
He waited, his muscles coiled as he let it come closer.
The kill was clean, a single swift motion that ended the creature’s life before it could feel fear. He offered a brief, silent acknowledgment to the spirit of the animal, a habit ingrained from his earliest hunting lessons. Then he set about preparing the carcass for transport.
As he worked, his mind drifted again. Back to her hands on his arm, tracing his scars with such gentle curiosity. Back to her voice, soft and wondering, asking him questions that cut straight to the heart of things he’d rather not examine.
“Clean hands just mean you’ve never done anything hard.”
No one had ever said anything like that to him before. He’d spent years carrying the weight of what he’d done—the kills, the violence, the compromises he’d made to survive. He’d assumed anyone who knew the truth would recoil from it. From him.
But she had looked at his scarred hands and seen something worth accepting.
She doesn’t understand,he reminded himself.She’s been isolated her whole life. She doesn’t know what she’s accepting.
The argument felt hollow even as he made it because he’d seen the intelligence in her eyes. He’d seen how accurately she observed the world and how quickly she processed information. She wasn’t naive about the world—she was simply approachingit without the prejudices that came from experience. She’d looked at him and formed her own conclusions.
And apparently, those conclusions included wanting to kiss him.
He finished his work and shouldered the prepared meat, beginning the trek back towards the tower. The sun had shifted position, sending long shadows through the canopy. He’d been gone longer than intended—lost in thought, moving slower than he should have.
She would be waiting. She’d asked if he would come back, and he’d promised.
What happens when I do?
He didn’t have an answer.
The tower rose above the jungle canopy like a finger pointing at the sky, its stone walls catching the golden light of late afternoon. He stood at the edge of the tree line for a long moment, trying to reconcile what he knew of this place with what he felt about the woman inside it.
A prison. No matter how comfortable or well-appointed, the tower was designed to keep her contained. The AI monitored her constantly. Although the door had opened to let him leave, he was sure it was still sealed against the outside world. She’d lived her entire life within these walls, never touching the ground, never feeling the jungle beneath her feet.
But she didn’t see it that way. To her, this was home. The only home she’d ever known.
