The door bursts open.
Regina is through it before I can blink, crossing the room in a blur of motion that ends with her arms wrapped around Killian’s neck and her face buried against his chest. She’s saying something—his name, I think, over and over—but the words are muffled against his skin.
He catches her. Holds her smaller form as it merges into his embrace. His eyes close and the lines in his face smooth out.
Sean and Micah are next, piling onto their pack alpha with the graceless enthusiasm of puppies reuniting with their father. There’s a lot of backslapping and what I can only describe as affectionate headbutting.
Wolves are tactile creatures. I’ve always found it somewhat exhausting to witness.
Rowan hangs back by the door. His expression is neutral, but there’s concern beneath it. The same concern that was in his eyes when I walked in and found him bleeding from Killian’s grip.
He made the same promise I just did. I can tell. And he’s having the same doubts about his ability to keep it.
Fortunately for him, only one of us will have to.
Regina finally pulls back enough to look at Killian’s face. Her hands cup his jaw, her thumbs brushing over his cheekbones like she’s checking to make sure he’s real.
It’s the first time I’ve ever seen her like this.
All her walls are down.
The analytical, powerful witch is, underneath it all, still a woman in love.
I do not believe, in all my years of existence, I have ever envied a creature more than I envy Killian Underwood right now.
“You’re awake.” Her voice is thick. “You’re actually awake. I thought—we thought?—“
“I’m here.” His voice is softer than I’ve ever heard it. Gentle in a way that seems foreign on a man his size. He nuzzles the mark on her neck with the unreserved tenderness of the strong. “I’m okay.”
A lie. We both know it’s a lie. But she accepts it because she needs to, and he offers it because he can’t bear to see her hurt.
This is what I wanted for her.
What I told myself I was protecting her for.
A life with people who love her openly, freely, without the complications that come with being bound to something like me.
It’s so much easier for wolves. Their love is straightforward. Uncomplicated. They feel it and they show it and they don’t spend centuries building walls around themselves to keep from destroying everything they touch.
Dragons are not built for love.
My father wasn’t. He took what he wanted, hoarded what pleased him, and discarded anything that threatened his control. My mother was a possession to him. Something beautiful to own and display. Even in death, she could not escape him until he grew bored of her, as he did of everything eventually.
I’ve spent my entire existence trying to be different. Trying to prove that what I am doesn’t have to dictate who I am.
And yet.
Here I am. Watching from across the room while the woman I’ve bound myself to embraces another man, feeling the deep and seething envy that my kind excels at more than any other.
If I am capable of love—and that’s a significantif—then what I feel for Regina is my version of it. The closest I can come. A fierce, possessive, tightly controlled thing that lives in the hollow space behind my ribs and refuses to die no matter how many times I tell it to.
No matter how much distance I keep between us.
Sean is talking now, filling the room with his usual chaotic energy. He’s recounting everything Killian missed, from the most banal detail of their shared classes to the battle in the meadow and my subsequent intervention.
“And then,boom!” Sean makes an explosion gesture with his hands. “Big green fire, werewolf goespoof, and the whole time we’re all standing there like, what the actual fuck is happening right now?”
“That’s a gross oversimplification,” Rowan mutters, though his heart isn’t in it.
