I set the bottle down before I crush it.
Because that is what I do. I destroy things. I have spent eight centuries learning how to survive in a world that does not value creatures like me. I have built an empire on control, precision, and the absolute certainty that attachment is a liability I cannot afford.
And now I am attached.
Irrevocably.
Catastrophically.
To a woman who wears shoes with cracked soles and eats ramen for dinner because she cannot afford anything else.
The cognitive dissonance is staggering.
I am a security titan. I run a multi-billion-dollar organization that protects the most powerful supernatural beings on three continents. I have operatives in twelve countries. I have vault systems that could withstand nuclear strikes. I have contingency plans for every conceivable threat.
And I am completely, utterly helpless against the reality that Tamsin Beck has become the single most important thing in my existence.
If she leaves, I will calcify.
If she stays, I make her a target.
Sentinel Dynamics is already circling. Marcus Hale is already probing for weaknesses. If he discovers that I have bonded with a human—if he realizes that she is the key to destabilizing my entire organization—he will use her.
He will threaten her.
He will hurt her.
And I will destroy him.
But not before she suffers.
I sink into the chair behind my desk, my wings folding heavily against the reinforced frame. My hands rest on the obsidian surface, claws tapping softly against the stone.
The mate-bond is not a weakness.
It is a weapon.
And I have just handed my enemies the trigger.
I should tell her. I should explain what is happening between us. I should give her the choice to walk away before the bond strengthens to the point where separation becomes neurologically unbearable.
But I will not.
Because I am selfish.
Because I am ancient.
Because I have spent eight hundred years alone, and the thought of returning to that isolation is more terrifying than any corporate threat Marcus Hale could devise.
I reach for the bottle again.
This time, I do not set it down.
I hold it in my palm, feeling the faint warmth seep into my stone skin, and I allow myself to acknowledge the truth I have been avoiding since the moment she walked into that massage suite.
I am in love with her.
Not the biological imperative of the mate-bond.
