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And now here he was again.

Different.

Older.

But the same steel-blue eyes. The same scent that curled through her ribs like a familiar song.

The familiar anger had her by the throat. Why couldn't he stay away? Why couldn't he let her be?

Her voice, when it came, wasn't quiet.

It was raw.

"You want to talk about regret, Hagan?" she said, her tone trembling with the pressure she was barely holding back. "I lost everything."

"I lost my father when I left the tribe too young to remember the sound of his voice. My brother when I was old enough to feel the sting of being forgotten. And my mother..." Her voice faltered for half a second. "Long before I ever left her. They gave me away like a bargaining chip. Sent me off to a tribe I didn't know, to a mate I barely understood."

Her gaze locked onto his, and it burned.

"I haven't seen my brother grown, don't know if he still remembers me. I don't know what my mother's hands feel like anymore. My friends- Talis and Niva. The only people who made me feel like I belonged somewhere. I gave up my whole world for the promise of a new one."

His expression changed, pain flashing across his face, but she didn't stop.

And he kept listening without interrupting.

"And still," she went on, her voice cracking, "still, I believed. I believed that maybe, just maybe, I had a new family waiting for me. A tribe that would welcome me. A fated who would hold me above all else. A boy I loved more than air, more than my own pride."

Her breath came ragged now. Her eyes shone, not with softness, but fury. Fury tempered by grief.

"Instead, I got silence. Suspicion. I got hostility from your people, and indifference from you. I got second-best. Not once. But twice."

His face crumpled, but she kept going.

"It took bleeding out onto the sacred sands for me to be free of you, Hagan. Free of that bond that felt more like a shackle than a gift."

He stepped closer, cautiously, like she was something wild and hurting. Maybe she was.

"I've built a whole life around learning how not to need you," she whispered then, the edge in her voice softening but never dulling. "How to live without the bond. Without the pain. And now you're back and I feel it again. Like the earth re-opening under my feet."

He said nothing, only looked at her like she was the sun and he'd been wandering blind in the dark. Her voice, when it came, was quiet.

"I want to believe you," she said. "I do."

His eyes searched hers, full of hope.

"But I don't know if I can."

He leaned closer, his presence warm even in the cool twilight.

"I know I am asking you to take a huge leap of faith. After all, I have failed you in so many different ways. If someone were to write a book on how not to treat your beloved, I would be on the front page. I can't change the past, no matter how badly I want to. All I can do is promise you that I'll never be that version of me again, Seren. It's not possible"

"That's what I'm afraid of," she said. Her smile was sad. "That you'll mean it now. That I'll fall. And one day you'll forget again."

She turned her face away, blinking hard.

"I don't know if I'm strong enough to survive you twice."

The silence stretched between them. And then, gently, he drew their joined hands to his lips, pressing a kiss to her knuckles—not demanding, not pleading.