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I yank the whip. It tightens. Not out of anger—because I can’t stop myself.

His smile falters, just barely. The corners tug downward for half a second, and I catch a glimpse of what’s underneath. Not weakness. Not fear.

Resolve.

“I’m not moving,” he says. And his voice is quieter now. Lower. “If you’re going to come for her, you’re going through me.”

“I’m nottryingto,” I grind out.

“I know.”

He doesn't pull against the whip. Doesn’t struggle. Juststands there, wrists bound, blades sheathed, eyes locked on me like he knows exactly what I’m carrying—and he’s not going to make me carry it alone.

“Tell Branwen to go to hell,” he says. “Tell herno.”

I laugh, bitter and broken at the edges. “It’s not that simple.”

“It never is,” he replies. “Doesn’t mean you stop trying.”

The magic pulses again—sharp this time. I feel the urge ripple through me, the need to act. To touch. To command. Lust, weaponized in my bloodstream, aching for release.

But he holds my gaze. He justwaits. Still my friend. Even now.

The pain doesn’t start with fire. It begins with something smaller—quieter. A tremor behind my sternum. A pulse too deep to name. At first, it feels like breathlessness, like I’ve run too hard for too long. Then it twists. Sharp. Invasive. The ache sharpens into something brutal as it rips upward through my chest, clawing into the hollow behind my ribs like she’s reaching for something she already owns.

Branwen.

Her magic doesn’t arrive with spectacle. It doesn’t crackle or burn. Ittakes. Cold and slow and precise. Her hooks dig in not with rage, but with certainty. The knowledge that she has every right to do this. That I am hers. That resistance is not defiance—it’sfailure. I try to move, to brace against it, but my body falters like a puppet mid-step. My limbs belong to me, but they don’tlisten. Not anymore. Not with her threading herself through every nerve like she’s stitching my soul back together in the shape she prefers.

And she’s furious.

Furious that I’m standing. That I haven’t struck. That I haven’t done what I was made to do—fill Luna. Not just with power. With obsession. With lust so thick it drowns her. That’s what Branwen wants. She doesn’t want blood. She wantsdevotion corrupted. She wants to turn what I am into something Luna willbegto be ruined by. And when I don’t move—when I choose stillness—Branwen punishes me for it.

The scream comes not through sound, but through thought. Through the deepest, most vulnerable places of me—places I didn’t think she could reach. Her voice doesn’t echo. Itscrapes. It grates against my skull until it feels like my brain is swelling, until I can barely tell where my own thoughts end and hers begin.

“You are mine.”

“She was made for you todestroy.”

“Take her. Or I will takeyou.”

My knees hit the ground hard, stone and ash biting into my skin through the ruined fabric of my trousers. The movement isn’t chosen—it’s yanked from me, a sharp tug through the spine that drops me like a marionette whose strings have beenjerked, not cut. My jaw clenches. I grind my teeth against the raw ache spreading down my throat, and I feel it—my magic unraveling, sliding through me like smoke laced with poison.

The hunger blooms.

Not for her. Forpower. For obedience. For the release of giving in.

Lust, rising like a wave. Curling toward Luna across the field, searching for her, aching for her. It snakes out of me without permission, a breathless drag of heat that licks at the edges of the bond we’ve onlybrushed—and the moment it touches hers, even just barely, the painspikes.

Not hers.

Mine.

My magic backlashes. The bond recoils. My breath catches hard enough to snap, like I’ve been punched from the inside out. Because it’s not just a bond. It’sus. Me and her. Bound not by fate, but by something ancient and volatile andunfinished. My power doesn't dominate it—it bends beneath it. I am not the master here. Not with her. Never with her.

And Branwen knows it.

That’s why she’sscreaming.