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As we always will be.

I stir awake, Cole’s warm body cradling me from behind. His thick arms wrap around me, securing my body to his, each rise and fall of his chest echoed in my own breath.

Inching myself out of his grasp in hesitant movements, I slowly drag the sheets off of me.

“No…not yet. Just a bit longer.” Cole’s sleep roughened voice brushes my ear. He pulls me in tighter against him, nuzzling his face into the crook of my neck.

I turn my head toward him and whisper, “I have to go. People might ask questions if they notice your sister is sleeping in your room.”

He grunts, his eyes still closed. “I’m so close to saying fuck it all.”

Still fastened in his grip, I twist toward him, brushing a lock of hair out of his face. “Soon. We’ll leave and go to the Dragon Lands where we don’t have to pretend anymore.”

His eyes flash open at my touch, his pupils dilating in the dim light. Sadness erodes his features into something sullen. “This is all I’ve ever wanted. You. Here. With me. Every moment away from you is torturous. Promise you’ll stay with me. Promise you won’t leave without me.”

A part of my heart crumbles. Perhaps I hadn’t realized the extent of how much our day in the forest all those months ago affected him. How afflicted he was after having gone months thinking I was dead. The way he watched me so intensely, as if I might be gone in the next blink. The pure rage exploding from him the night I was held hostage, when my life was at risk. I could only imagine how dark, traumatizing, and lonely it had been for him. An abyss of sadness and turmoil rages within his pained eyes as he waits for me to respond.

I lean my forehead into his. “I promise.”

He twirls a piece of my hair around his finger a few times before tucking it behind my ear. In that same line of movement, he drags his fingers along my jaw to rest under my chin and tilts my face up to him. It’s so intimately him that I melt. His lips brush mine, softly. As if any harder and I may shatter underneath his touch. I melt into a puddle of smiles and kiss him.

“I love you,” I whisper.

Those three words light a fire within him.

A smile cracks through his torment, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Gods, I am pathetically in love with you. Addicted and consumed. Sometimes I feel like I can’t think straight.” He presses a kiss to the tip of my nose. “There could never be enough of you that I love. Until the sun rises in the south and sets in the north, I will always be yours.”

Our fingers intertwine, and he pulls our hands toward his mouth. He pauses, his gaze fixed on my hand.

His thumb caresses my middle finger. “What…is this? You didn’t have this before.”

Even in the dimness, the dark circle around my finger is stark. The fact that Cole has every inch of my skin memorized has me grinning like a buffoon.

“I’ve had it since I found Daeja,” I answer.

“Weird…” He flicks his gaze back up to me.

Fighting against the urge to stay, now exacerbated by the way he watches me with a lingering sadness that’s hard to miss, I slide out of his bed.

After I leave Cole’s room, I slip into the healer’s quadrant. The little I do know of herbs and medicine is the power of pennyroyal. A green leafy plant with bursts of pale purple flowers. It’s been used for generations as a contraceptive and at heavy dosages, can be lethal.

I pick out a few petals from the stash in the healer’s quadrant and pop them into my mouth before I manage to get back to my room without spotting anyone. I change into a nightgown and shuffle into the cold linens of my bed.

As I lay staring at the ceiling, I can’t keep my mind off Cole. How the slowness and ease of his fingertips against my skin could calm any storm. The way he never shies away from telling me how he feels. How he is the perfect balance of gentle andunyielding. I’ve always been addicted to his presence. Every time I’m near him, I feel such a cosmic pull to him. It’s easy for me to lose control when I’m around him, as if all my common sense goes out the window. He makes me reckless—not in the sense that I’m careless in a world outside of him. But reckless when it comes to my heart for him. I find myself wanting to bow before him and surrender every bit of myself on a silver platter. I’m only lucky that he feels the same.

Gods, I love him.

twenty-five

HURT THINGS BITE

Daeja stalks toward me, shadows swarming around her as she approaches. In the dim starlight, it’s a menacing view. One that would have caused anyone else to turn tail and run. She stops a few feet away, tilting her head to the side as she sniffs. “You…smell…”

I snort. “Well if that isn’t the most pleasant way I’ve been greeted—”

“Different,”she finishes.

Maybe because...I blush as I consider how to explain it to her. All day today we shared scattered gazes across the distances separating Cole and I. A flirty grin here. A lingering stare there. A brush of a shoulder and skittering fingertips across my lower back as he passed by. It was tantalizing. And unbearable.