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To Luna.

To what comes next.

I sigh, long and low, as I crouch beside the tire. The marker squeaks with every stroke as I shade in the ridiculous curvature of Silas’s masterpiece. It's crude. It's juvenile. And, fuck me, it’s funny. It’ll wash off. Eventually. But for now? It stays.

My fingers blur the lines with deliberate exaggeration, a smirk twitching at the corner of my mouth as I finish detailing the most ridiculous veiny monstrosity I’ve ever seen deface my bike.

“You’re defiling your own bike now?” Her voice slices through me before I even hear her footsteps. Soft, amused, curious.

I don’t look up immediately. Because I know what happens when I do. That tether, that cursed pull—it digs in deeper. Like she’s not already woven through me in ways I can’t cut out.

“What are you doing?” she asks again, slower this time. Like she’s genuinely baffled.

I cap the marker and rise, fingers stained in ink, soul stained in far worse. “Enhancing it. You have no appreciation for fine art.”

Her brow arches. She’s wrapped in one of those oversized shirts that definitely isn’t hers. Probably Silas’s. Or Elias’s. Or worse—mine. I don’t even know anymore. She wears us like threads stitched into her skin. Wears our damn chaos like perfume.

“Is that… a dick?” she asks, trying not to laugh, biting her lip as she walks closer.

“Anatomically exaggerated,” I say coolly, wiping my hands on a rag and tossing it to the side. “Silas’s doing. I just improved the shading.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“No, darling. I’m the only one here telling the truth.”

That catches her. She stills, her breath pausing just slightly. That’s the thing about Luna—she hears the layers. She tastes the bitterness under the sweetness. She knows I don’t say things unless I mean them.

She steps forward. Close enough that the bond hums between us like a wire pulled too tight.

“You going to run again?” she asks, voice soft. Accusatory, but not cruel.

I meet her eyes then. The way she holds herself now—it’s different. There’s more power in her posture, more steel in her spine. She’s not the girl we met. Not the Sin Binder we thought we could use.

She’s becoming something else.

Something worse.

“I’m not the one running,” I say quietly.

She narrows her gaze. “No? Then what are you doing out here? Hiding in a garage. Shading dicks.”

“I’m waiting for you to make a mistake.”

Her breath catches. Just barely. But it does.

“Because when you do,” I continue, stepping closer, the air between us crackling now, the bond pressing between my ribs like a knife, “I’ll be there to collect what’s left.”

She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t retreat.

She fucking smiles.

“You think you’ll be the one collecting me?” she murmurs, chin lifting just slightly.

“No,” I say. “I think I already have.”

And I do. Even if I never take the bond. Even if I never let her inside me the way the others have—there’s a part of her that’s mine. The part that looks at me and sees everything I want to keep hidden.

The part that knows I’ll ruin her, and wants me anyway.