Page 85 of The Sin Binders Ascent

He glances at me again, then shrugs off the drenched outer layer of his shirt, dragging it over his head in one slow pull, like it annoys him more than the cold. Beneath it, his skin gleams in the dark, that ever-present shimmer to his aura making the air taste faintly of heat and something spiced. Not warmth. Want.

He holds the shirt toward me without saying anything. I look at it, then him, and the irony makes something bitter twist in my chest.

Desire offering comfort.

Fuck him.

But my body is past pride. I take it.

The fabric is wet but warmer than my skin, and when I pull it over my head, it smells like him. Smoke and late nights and something sharper underneath, like scorched sugar. It’s maddening. I shift away from him, wrapping it tighter around myself, but the cuff draws me back. Always back.

Theo leans against the wall, watching the vines pulse. I hate how calm he looks. I hate that even here, in this place that feels like a corpse of some god’s dream, he still looks like he belongs.

My hands sink into the cold dirt beside me, the soil loose and strange beneath my fingers. Not soft like the earth I know. It’s gritty and damp, flecked with something that sparkles faintly in the cave’s dim light, like powdered bone or crushed gemstone. I dig deeper anyway, needing the anchor, needing the feeling of something real under my nails. My palms ache from how tightly I grip it.

“So,” he says after a long stretch of nothing, his voice low and flat like he’s trying to make it harmless, “how long do you think until one of your broody lovers busts through those vines?”

I flex my fingers deeper into the dirt, feel it pack under my nails. “They’re not broody.”

He gives a short laugh, not mean, but not gentle either. “Lucien looks like he was born brooding. Riven too. That one growls, doesn’t he?”

He’s trying to bait me, and I know it. I also know it’s working. My jaw clenches.

“They’re coming,” I say, more to myself than to him.

“I didn’t say they weren’t. But you’re smart, Luna. You know this place doesn’t follow rules.”

I don’t want to talk about the place. I don’t want to admit that my magic’s still gone, or that I’m aching in places I didn’t know could ache, or that the thing pressing hardest against my ribs isn’t fear, it’s loneliness. That severed, raw kind of alone that feels like the entire world has turned its back on you. I press harder into the dirt. It doesn’t help.

He opens his eyes and turns to look at me. “You always dig like that when you’re pissed? Or is it just when you’re cold and stuck in a cave with me?”

I glance at him from the corner of my eye. “You talk a lot for someone who keeps getting told to shut up.”

He grins. “It’s part of my charm. You’ll learn to appreciate it eventually.”

I yank my hands out of the earth and wipe them on my thighs, streaking dirt down the worn fabric. “Don’t count on it.”

He watches me a little longer, something shifting in the way he’s sitting. His cockiness folds down slightly, not gone, just dimmed like a fire banked for later. When he speaks again, there’s no edge to it.

“What’s it like? Being bonded to that many people.”

I blink. The question is so… normal. Invasive, but not cruel. Just curious.

I shrug, eyes still on the ground. “It’s not like anything else. It’s loud and complicated and beautiful and violent. Sometimes it feels like too much. Other times, I’ll disappear without them.”

He’s quiet for a beat. Then, softer, “And now?”

My throat tightens. I dig my heel into the stone floor. “Now it feels like I’m going to splinter.”

There’s a weight in the air after I say it. He doesn’t make a joke. Doesn’t smirk. For once, he lets it sit between us like a real thing.

“I didn’t want this,” I say finally. “You. This chain. Any of it.”

“I know.”

I exhale slowly, my breath fogging in the cold. “If you try anything, I’ll still gut you.”

“I believe you,” he says. Then he leans his head back again and adds, quieter, “But I’m not the one you should be afraid of out here.”