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“Why?” he asks.

“Because I don’t know if I’ll survive wanting you back.”

His gaze flickers to my mouth, then back to my eyes.

“I don’t want your survival,” he says. “I want your surrender.”

His words strike deeper than any blade. My breath catches. For one dangerous heartbeat, I almost step into him — into the fire I know will consume me.

I swallow hard and turn to leave. I need distance. A breath. A moment to remember who I am when I’m not pressed into his heat, caught in the snare of his eyes and the weight of his voice. My hand is on the door when he speaks, stopping me in my tracks.

“Running again, Queen?”

The title cuts sharper than any insult. I spin, fury snapping like a blade.

“I have never run.”

“You’re doing it now,” he says, stepping towards me, slow and deliberate.

“I am trying to not do something foolish,” I hiss.

“Like admit you want me?”

My heart pounds, ears ringing with the silence after his words.

I feel like I’ve been cracked open. My control is bleeding out between the lines of our shared history. He stands in the wreckage of all I knew without apology, lit by the dying torches and the rage coiled tight behind his eyes.

“Wanting you,” I say carefully, “has never been the problem.” His eyes flash, and in the next breath, he’s across the room. “I should hate you,” I whisper as he stops inches from me. “You burned my world. You call me Queen, but your people see me as a reminder of war.”

“Youarea reminder,” he growls. “Of survival. Of power wrapped in silk. Of someone I cannot bend, no matter how I try.”

My hand trembles at my side. I don’t know if I want to slap him or grab him and never let go.

“And that infuriates you?” I say.

“Itobsessesme.”

And then the moment breaks.

No warning.

No softening.

His mouth crashes against mine like a storm slamming into cliffs. Raw, desperate, and unforgiving. It isn’t a kiss, not in the gentle way lovers kiss. It’s a collision. Fire and fury. It’s the ghost of a battlefield, our lips tasting of war and ashes and something far older.

I gasp against him, fists curling in his chest plate, but he doesn’t pull back.

Neither do I.

I hate that it feels like a claim. I hate how my body arcs into him, how I want more even as my mind screams of danger. I’ve been alone so long. Cold. Calculating. Cloaked in strategy.

This is heat.

This is chaos.

This is beingalive.

His hand tangles in my hair, not cruel but firm, grounding me to him as if he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he lets go. I feel his fingers tremble. Not dominance.