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Because they’re theirs.

Theirs.

The delicate snare of Riven’s warding runes curl beneath my hipbone, precise and ruthless. I trace them with my gaze, my heart battering my ribs as I follow the pattern higher—Elias’ jagged script tangled over my ribcage, looping recklessly like he carved it there with laughter and sin. Silas’ swirling chaos inked like vines up the inside of my left breast. And there—beneath the swell of my breast, coiled like something dangerous and permanent—Ambrose’s.

Smaller. Subtle. A thin line of sigils circling my sternum, almost invisible unless you’re looking. But there.

Mine.

I can’t breathe.

Ambrose moves before I can speak—rolling off me like I’ve burned him, already halfway across the room, gathering his clothes with the sharp, precise movements of a man trying to put himself back together piece by piece.

He says nothing. Just straightens, methodical, pulling his shirt over his head like the bond didn’t just gut both of us and leave me marked with all of them.

I stare at him, my skin still thrumming with heat, the lines beneath my ribs still smoldering like fresh ink.

“You knew,” I say, voice rasping, but I don't mean to. I don’t even realize the words leave me until his shoulders lock, tight and rigid, like I struck a nerve.

He doesn’t look at me when he answers. “Of course I did.”

Of course.

Because Ambrose Dalmar doesn’t gamble without knowing the odds. He knew the moment he let himself bleed for me in that car. He knew when he bound himself halfway, when he stepped into my bed tonight. He knew what the bond would do. He just didn’t tell me.

My fingers graze my stomach, tracing the spiraling ink, the familiar curve of Silas’ sigil tangled over my ribs, like he’s laughing under my skin.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” I whisper, more to myself than to him.

Ambrose laughs once, low and cold, cutting through the quiet like a blade. “Nothing about you was supposed to happen.”

He glances back finally, and his eyes rake over me—bare, inked, wrecked—like I’m something dangerous now. Something irreversible.

His voice is quieter when he adds, “You’re branded now, Luna. And not just by me.”

Before I can speak, before I can ask him what the hell that means, he’s gone—moving sharp and fast, slipping out the door without another word.

I’m left alone in the wreckage. The sheets tangled around my thighs. My skin humming, burning. The tattoos stitched across me like a map I don’t know how to read.

And somewhere beneath it all—the bond pulses hard against my sternum. Final. Complete. His. Theirs. Mine.

Silas

The door slams like thunder splitting the hall, and I don’t even flinch. I hear it—the weight in the sound, the fury tucked behind it like a blade barely sheathed. Ambrose doesn’t slam doors. He doesn’t waste movement, doesn’t give away how close he is to shattering.

So when he does?

It’s bad.

I’m halfway down the hall before I realize I’ve already moved. My hoodie’s half-zipped, one sleeve shoved up past my elbow, and I should care more about how absolutely fucked we all are, but all I can think is—I’ve seen that look on his face before.

On mine. It’s the look of a man who’s halfway buried and hasn’t figured out yet that he can’t claw his way out.

By the time I get to the garage, he’s standing by the workbench like he’s trying to level the whole goddamn room with his spine alone. Arms braced on the counter, head dipped forward, shoulders tight as a noose.

The garage is mostly empty. The low flicker of a warded glowlamp overhead, casting cold light on cracked concrete and forgotten weapons. One of Riven’s blades rests on the far wall, glinting like it knows how this conversation ends.

I lean against the doorframe like I’m not here to drag him out of whatever spiral he’s diving into.