That lands like a punch to the ribs because it’s so simple, so honest, and I know how much it costs him to admit something without dressing it up in sharp edges and barbed wire.

“You don’t hate being bound to her,” I say slowly, voice rough. “You thought it would ruin you.”

Ambrose huffs a sound that isn’t quite a laugh. “It did.”

I frown, about to argue, but he cuts me a look that silences me before I can speak.

“Just not in the way I expected,” he adds, voice low, a thread of something unreadable curling beneath it. “I thought she’d tear me apart. Thought I’d lose who I was the second the bond snapped into place. That I’d bend to her the way the rest of you have.”

“That’s not what’s happening?” I challenge, arching a brow.

Ambrose’s mouth twists. “Oh, I’m bent, Vale. Just not in the way she thinks.”

I lean back, letting my head hit the wood behind me. “You’re not as immune to her as you pretend.”

“No one is,” he answers too easily, like it’s a fact carved into stone. “That’s the thing about her. She’s not trying to control any of us. She just… exists. And it ruins everything.”

I glance at him then, studying him sideways, the way his fingers tap a restless rhythm against his knee, how his jaw keeps flexing like he’s chewing on something heavier than he wants to swallow.

“You like her,” I murmur, not as accusation but truth.

Ambrose goes still. His fingers pause mid-tap, eyes darkening.

“I hate how much I do,” he says quietly.

It’s not soft. It’s not a confession. It’s a sentence, carved with precision, and it hits harder because it’s real.

“She’s the first thing in centuries I couldn’t negotiate my way around. Couldn’t bargain, couldn’t outthink. She doesn’t care about my rules.”

He finally looks at me, and it’s a look that feels like he’s cutting himself open without flinching.

“She doesn’t want anything from me,” he adds. “Not my power, not my money, not my name.”

I nod slowly, because that’s the thing about Luna. She wants all of us—but not the pieces we usually give away so easily.

“She just wants you,” I say quietly.

Ambrose’s mouth curves into something bitter. “And I don’t know what the fuck to do with that.”

I laugh, broken and rough, because I know exactly how he feels.

“She’s going to wreck us all,” I mutter.

He hums, the sound low and sharp. “She already has.”

We lapse into quiet again, but it’s easier now. Not lighter, but something close to understanding resting between us.

And after a moment, Ambrose glances sideways at me again, voice a low rasp. “You know you’re the only one who ever asks me shit like this, right?”

I shrug, the corner of my mouth twitching. “You’re welcome.”

Another huff of a laugh, but it’s real this time. It curls warm in my chest like I’ve cracked something open I wasn’t supposed to.

And neither of us says it, but it’s there—

We’re both hers, in our own goddamned ways.

I lean forward, forearms braced on my knees, listening to Ambrose breathe beside me like this conversation’s heavier than it should be. Like he’s carrying something he hasn’t said yet.

Table of Contents