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Luna
Riven shakes beneath me, his body thrumming with an anger too vast to be contained. The ground beneath us shudders in response, cracks spiderwebbing outward from where he stands, as if even the Hollow itself is struggling beneath the weight of his wrath. His body is a live wire of rage and ruin, his breathing uneven, raw, the sound of it scraping against my nerves like something broken.
I press closer, my arms tightening around him, my fingers digging into the slick heat of his bare skin. He’s burning up, his body fever-hot from the aftermath of his Wrath, from the power still clinging to him like a second skin. But I don’t let go. I don’t flinch, don’t pull away. If anything, I hold him tighter.
"You’re okay," I whisper, voice steady despite the storm still raging inside him. "I’ve got you. I’m here."
His breath catches, a sharp hitch in his throat, and something shifts.
The Wrath doesn’t break, not completely. It clings to him, resisting, refusing to let go, but my words carve through it, cracking something deep inside him. His fingers twitch against my waist, a hesitation, a fracture in the overwhelming need to fight, to destroy.
Then, he stills.
For the first time since he lost himself to the Wrath, his body stops trembling. His grip loosens, his shoulders drop, and his head tilts forward, pressing against the side of my neck. A slow exhale. A surrender.
I slide my fingers into his hair, gently, carefully, waiting for him to come back fully, waiting for the moment he remembers where he is, who I am. His breath is warm against my throat, heavy, uneven, and for a long moment, neither of us moves.
Then, finally, he speaks, low, hoarse, barely a whisper.
"Luna."
My name. No bite. No resistance. Just a raw, quiet thing, said like a confession, like a prayer.
My fingers tighten in his hair, my other hand pressed against the curve of his spine. "Yeah," I breathe. "I’ve got you."
I don’t know how long we can stand like that. It feels like forever. Or maybe no time at all. The others are still watching, waiting, but for now, none of that matters.
Because he’s here. And he's not lost.
He is drenched in blood. It coats his arms, splattered across his chest, streaked along the sharp cut of his jaw where the creature’s death left its final mark. The thing beneath him is nothing but ruin now, its body torn apart, no longer shifting, no longer breathing. But still, he holds his blade like he’s expecting another fight, fingers clenched too tightly around the hilt, his body still too rigid, too coiled.
He’s here. But not all the way. I know that because he hasn’t let go yet.
"Riven," I whisper, my voice steady despite the way his energy crackles against me, wild and untethered. I don’t pull away. I don’t force him to move. I just press my palm flat against his chest, against the fever heat of him, and wait. "It’s over."
His body tenses, his jaw ticking like he wants to argue. Like the Wrath inside him is whispering no, not yet, not enough.
I watch as something shifts in his expression, something raw and fractured, and then, he exhales. The blade vanishes in a whisper of magic. Not thrown. Not dropped. Just gone.
And before I can react, before I can take another breath, before I can process the fact that he’s finally let go,
He wraps his arms around me.
I freeze. Not because I don’t want it. Not because I don’t need it. But because I wasn’t expecting it.
Riven Kain doesn’t give. He doesn’t take comfort, doesn’t ask for it, doesn’t know what to do with it. He lashes out, he destroys, he seethes. He lets the rage consume him so he doesn’t have to feel anything else.
But right now, his arms tighten, his body collapsing against mine, his breath hot against the curve of my throat. His skin smolders beneath my touch, the aftershock of Wrath still burning through him, but he holds me like he needs this more than he needs air, more than he needs to fight.
And maybe he does. Maybe I do, too.
So I don’t speak. I don’t let go.
I just hold him back.
"As much as I hate to break up this touching little moment," Elias drawls from somewhere behind me, his voice too amused for the absolute disaster happening around us, "we’ve got a problem."
I don’t let go of Riven immediately. His breathing is still uneven, his muscles still coiled tight, his Wrath simmering beneath his skin like an ember refusing to go out. But Elias rarely sounds serious unless he means it, and something in his tone makes me pull back just enough to glance over my shoulder.