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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.