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She didn’t look up. She'd heard him, of course she had. That voice was impossible to ignore—low, deliberate, laced with that maddening blend of authority and intimacy. Her first instinct was to pretend she hadn’t. Let the silence stretch until he went away or lost interest. But that wasn’t how this worked. Not with Finn. Not with them.

“I’m working.”

“I know that look.”

“What look?”

“The one that says you’re planning something.”

“I’m always planning something.”

He moved closer, enough that she felt the heat of his body behind her. Not touching. Just present. “Then maybe plan how to stay alive. Riordan doesn’t make idle threats.”

Her fingers paused over the keyboard. “You think I don’t know that?” Her breath caught, just for a second. Not enough to show weakness—but enough to remind her that fear could still slip past the walls she'd spent years building.

“I think you try to pretend it doesn’t scare you. And that kind of pretending gets people killed.”

Keira stood abruptly, the chair scraping back against the floor. “You don’t get to psychoanalyze me, O’Neill. You lost that right when I walked away.”

He didn’t flinch. “You think I let you go?”

She blinked. “Excuse me?”

“You think I stood at that altar, waiting like a damn fool, because I didn’t care? You didn’t say a word—you just ran.”

“I think you let your family use me like a pawn and didn’t stop them.”

Finn’s jaw flexed. “You’ve got it backwards. It wasn’t Con who offered you up—it was your uncle. Cathal handed you over like a peace treaty wrapped in a bow. Con... he’s a romantic. He thought giving you to me might make up for the blood onboth sides. He thought I could protect you, because he knew how I felt. But I wasn’t calling the shots then. Not the ones that mattered.”

“And now?”

His eyes darkened. “Con is still The O'Neill, but I have a lot more sway and power than I did before.”

For a long beat, neither of them moved. The air between them snapped tight, electric—like a live wire strung too close to skin. Keira's breathing slowed, each inhale sharp with tension, her body caught between instinct and memory. She felt it—his presence, his pull—as if gravity itself had been altered. But she didn’t step forward, and he didn’t reach for her. They stayed suspended in that impossible moment, neither willing to break the spell first.

Keira’s pulse thudded in her ears. “I’m not the same girl who knelt for you in a ring of candlelight and let you mark every inch of me.”

As the words left her lips, the memory rose unbidden—flickering candlelight dancing across the walls, the quiet rasp of his voice in her ear, the sting of his mouth on her skin followed by the weightless warmth that had once felt like belonging. She shoved the image back where it came from. She couldn’t afford to let it live too long. Not now. Not when her body still remembered too well what her heart was trying to forget.

“No,” he agreed. “You’re stronger. Smarter. Braver.”

She swallowed hard. “And harder to break.”

His voice was quiet. “Good. Because I don’t want to break you. I want to earn you.”

The words hit her harder than they should have.

Keira turned away, needing space. Air. Something to break the magnetic pull of his voice and the look in his eyes.

Her steps were slow, measured, as if putting space between them could somehow neutralize the heat rolling off him. Shepaused near the edge of the room, dragging in a breath that didn’t quite reach her lungs. The distance helped—barely. His presence still clung to her skin like the heat from lightning, alive and electric, even without his touch.

Behind her, Finn didn’t follow. Didn’t push, didn’t speak—but somehow, his absence burned hotter than his presence. It settled over her skin like static, humming beneath her nerves, louder for being invisible. She didn’t have to turn around to know he was deliberately holding back, giving her space the way he thought she needed it. And maybe she did. But it only made her want to close that distance more. Damn him for knowing that too.

She needed to remember why she ran. Why she stayed away. Not just the betrayal, but the way her world had collapsed under the weight of everyone else’s agendas. The way her choices had been rewritten as strategy, her love weaponized without her consent. She needed to remember how that felt—like drowning in a room full of people who thought they were saving her. And she needed to do it fast—before the warmth of his voice and the pull of his presence made her forget how to stop wanting him.

Just then, the intercom buzzed. Finn answered it in a clipped tone, his voice stripped of warmth. When he turned back to her, the mask was back in place—his expression blank, jaw set, eyes unreadable. The easy confidence and controlled menace he wore like a second skin had vanished, replaced by a kind of clinical detachment that sent a prickle of unease down her spine.

And that unsettled her more than she wanted to admit. The sudden return of his emotional armor—the chill in his tone, the flatness in his eyes—it wasn’t just defensive. It was deliberate. Controlled. Like he was switching modes. And if Finn O’Neill thought whatever was coming warranted that level of shutdown, she was damn well worried.