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From feeling.

He doesn’t push me away. Doesn’t flinch. He just turns toward me, almost instinctively, like his body is searching for something solid in a world that no longer holds its shape. His face finds my throat, my collarbone, whatever part of me he can bury into without needing to look up.

And then it comes.

The shaking.

The way his whole frame begins to tremble, quietly at first, like a ripple moving outward from the place he’d tried to lock it all away. But it builds—each breath rougher, more frayed than the last, until his hands clutch at me, fingers pressing into my skin like he doesn’t know how else to hold on.

Tears soak my skin. His breath hitches. He tries to stay quiet, to hold it in, but it slips through—the broken rhythm of a man who’s been holding his grief with both hands for too long, and no longer has the strength to keep it caged.

I don’t try to stop it.

I don’t soothe him with words. I don’t shush the noise he makes. I let him cry—raw and unguarded—into the hollow of my body like I was built for this moment, like my ribs were carved to catch everything he couldn’t carry on his own.

He clings to me as if it’s the first time he’s been allowed to feel what’s real. No mask. No performance. No seduction. Just this—his tears on my skin, his body curled against mine, and nothing in the way.

I stroke my fingers through his hair, slow and steady, and anchor us both in the quiet. Not comforting him to make it stop—just to let him know I’m still here.

He cries for a long time. And when it ends, it doesn’t end cleanly. He doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t apologize. He just breathes. Shallow and wrecked, curled against me like something sacred and ashamed.

So I stay.

Wrapped around him. Silent. Still.

Because this—this is the bond.

Not the sex. Not the magic.

But this.

The grief. The nakedness. The truth of who he is when no one’s watching.

Ambrose

I hide in the garage like a fucking teenager dodging his feelings. A six-pack of beer sweats against the concrete beside me, untouched but necessary. It’s not about the taste. It’s about the weight in my hand, the clink of glass that sounds louder in my head than anything else right now. A distraction. A prop for a man pretending he’s still in control.

Because I’m not.

Caspian is bonded now. Fully. It snapped into place like a shackle—and I felt it. We all did. The room shifted. The universe held its breath for a second too long, and everything turned. The bond’s sealed, stitched tight between them, and because of that, the pull I feel toward her is worse. Sharper. Hungrier.

That’s the part no one tells you—when one bond completes, it’s not relief for the rest of us. It’s temptation. Magnified. Like her power is reaching out, wrapping a hand around each of our throats and squeezing, softly. Seductively. She smells different now. Looks different. Like power was poured into her bloodstream and kissed her bones.

She’s not just a sin binder anymore.

She’s becoming something else. Something none of us were prepared for. And I am not going to be number five. Silas and I always held out. Always made sure we were the ones who stayed unclaimed, unchained. The others fell like dominos, and then—thankfully, beautifully—most sin binders died before it came to this.

But Luna?

She’s still here.

And worse—she’s thriving.

It’s not supposed to go this far. Five bonds is the most we’ve ever seen, and that ended in a funeral and a crater in the world that hasn’t healed since. I don’t think she’s dying. I don’t think she’s going to stop. I think she’s going to keep taking. Keep claiming. And the part that eats at me isn’t that I’ll be next.

It’s that a part of me already wants it.

The bond is whispering at the edges of my thoughts. A song I can’t unhear. I feel her walking through the house like a gravitational shift. I know what room she’s in by the way my skin tightens. I know when she looks in my direction, even if she’s on the other side of the fucking building.