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Put the pieces together, Callie. They’re right there in front of you.

But of course, she won’t. She can’t. I’ve kissed her on the lips and between her thighs—I all but moved her into my home—yet she sees none of it for what it is. Because even after seven years, she still is that lonely girl that doesn’t believe she’s allowed to love and be loved.

I gently touch her cheek. “Callie.”

Can’t she tell that she brings me to my knees? Morning, evening, and night, she’s always right there in every beat of my heart. That sweet voice of hers sings through my veins. It calls to me across worlds. Everything she is, is mine, and everything I am is hers. Always.

I spread my wings fully out, the tips of them nearly brushing the walls of my living room.

Gods it feels good to finally expose them. Fought this for too long.

“A fairy doesn’t show his wings to his betrothed.”

I move my hand to the back of her neck, stroking the skin there softly. It still fills me with wonder that I get to be near her. That once again I can finally touch her. She’s not the only one who thought that this was too good to be true.

“A fairy shows them to his soulmate.”

She stills.

Seven years of pain, seven years of waking up with the same damn ache that never goes away. Maybe tonight I can finally put that anguish to bed, once and for all.

“You lie,” she breathes, disbelief coating her voice.

I know the feeling. Like she can’t bear to believe it because it might break her. No, itwillbreak her. It will break her and she’ll never be the same. It’s already broken me.

“No, cherub, I’m not.”

She searches my face. “So you’re saying …?”

“That I’m in love with you? That I have been since you were that obstinate teen with way too much courage? That you’re my soulmate and I’m yours? Gods save me, yes I am.”

Callie reels a little back, her eyes widening and her lips parting. One of her hands touches her chest, right over her heart.

She must feel the rightness of it. The same way the river flows downstream, the same way night follows day and the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. We were always meant to be.

She searches my face. “But you left.”

“I did,” I agree. “But I never meant to stay away.”

“Then why did you?”

Her eyes have that same haunted look they had back when I first met her, only now it’s my transgressions and not her stepfather’s that are responsible for it.

I run a hand through my hair, feeling like the world’s worst soulmate. “You were so damn young,” I explain.Never meant to hurt you.“And you’d been abused. And my heart chose you. I felt it that first night, but I didn’t believe it, not until the feeling grew until it couldn’t be ignored.”

How to explain our bond? It defies the logic of both our worlds and our magic.

It’s like someone bottled up her essence and I drank it all in. It simmers beneath my skin. It’s recognition so primal, so pure, there are no words to describe it. It defies the senses—it defies even magic.

“I couldn’t stay away,” I continue, “I could barely resist you at all, but I didn’t want to push you into something. Not when you’d just escaped a man that took and took. I didn’t want you to think that was all men were good for.”

She stares at me, a tear escaping her eyes. Another follows.

I feel my secrets unburdening themselves. A part of me expected that. What I hadn’t expected was for them to unburdenher.

I brush Callie’s tears away.Should’ve done this much sooner.

“So I let you play your game, buying favor after favor from me,” I say, “until the day I couldn’t take it. No mate of mine shouldoweme.”