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Relief flickers briefly in my chest, but it doesn’t last.

“Then how am I supposed to know what I truly feel,” I ask, because that is the part that scares me the most, the part I cannot untangle. “How do I know it’s not just the bond making me feel something?”

Eagan studies me for a long moment before answering. “Because even now,” he says quietly, “you are still questioning it.”

I frown slightly. “That doesn’t prove anything.”

“It proves everything,” he replies. “If the bond was controlling you the way you believe, you would not be doubting it. You would not be standing here trying to separate what is yours and what could be the bond.”

“And Kylian?” I ask, my voice quieter now. “How does he know what he feels is real and not just the bond?”

“Because he has lived long enough to know the difference,” he says. “And because before you, he felt nothing like this at all.”

That answer doesn’t comfort me.

If anything, it makes everything worse.

Because now I don’t know which part of this belongs to me.

“Let me ask you something,” Eagan says, and I look at him. “Why do you love Arlo?”

My brows pull together at the question, but when I open my mouth to answer, nothing comes out. I have no clear explanation, no neat reason, just the feeling itself sitting there without words.

“I just do,” I say finally, though it sounds weaker out loud than it does in my head.

Eagan chuckles. “Then let me ask you something else. Do you love him because you chose him or because he chose you?”

I frown. “What are you trying to say?”

“I’m saying that Arlo is familiar. He is safe. He is predictable. He is everything your life allowed you to have. He was there when you had no one.”

I shake my head. “That’s not—”

“You grew up with him, suffered with him, survived beside him, and that kind of connection feels like love because it is the only version of it you have ever known.”

“That doesn’t make it less real,” I argue.

“I didn’t say it wasn’t real,” he counters. “I’m saying it was built from circumstance.” He watches me carefully before continuing. “When something is all you have ever known, it becomes home, predictable, safe, even if it is not everything you could have had,” he says. “People hold onto that, not because it is always right for them, but because it is familiar.”

“And Kylian?” I ask, quieter now, because I already know this is where he’s going.

Eagan’s expression shifts slightly. “Kylian is the opposite of everything you understand,” he says. “He is not safe, he is not predictable, and he does not fit into any version of the future you have ever imagined for yourself.”

My throat tightens.

“You were raised to fear vampires,” he continues. “To see us as monsters, not something to stand beside, and now you are bound to one.”

“That doesn’t mean what I feel for him is real,” I say. “If anything, it proves the bond is forcing it, because nothing about him is . . . safe.”

“Exactly,” Eagan says. “There is nothing safe about him, nothing familiar, nothing comfortable. Yet you are standing here questioning what you feel for him instead of rejecting it outright.”

I stare at him.

“And now you’re trying to convince yourself that the bond is controlling your feelings for him,” he continues, watching me closely, “because that is easier than accepting that what you feel does not fit into the safe little box you had with Arlo.”

My breath catches. “That’s not—”

“Kylian does not offer you a simple future,” Eagan cuts in quietly. “He does not offer you a quiet life, or something you can predict day to day. He offers you uncertainty, power, danger, and a world that will never let you feel settled.”