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His jaw tightens, but he doesn’t look away. “Maybe.”

I set the kitten aside carefully, shifting so I can face him fully, my legs folding beneath me on the bed. “You weren’t just angry at me,” I say quietly. “You were projecting. You weren’t talking about the guys—you were talking about yourself. You said the others didn’t want me, but what you meant was, you didn’t want me.”

Lucien doesn’t flinch. He just looks tired, like he’s been holding the weight of something sharp for too long.

“I don’t bend, Luna,” he says finally, the words slow, deliberate, heavy. “I don’t want to.”

My breath catches, but I hold it in, let him keep going.

“I spent weeks,” he continues, voice roughening like gravel underfoot, “with Branwen inside my head, inside my body, making me a thing I didn’t recognize. She controlled me through a bond I never asked for. Every thought I had wasn’t mine. Every choice was hers. And I crawled out of that with nothing left except this… pressure.”

He drags a hand over his mouth, shaking his head like he can’t believe he’s saying this.

“It’s not that I don’t like you,” he says finally, his voice quieter now, sharper at the edges. “It’s what you represent.”

My chest twists, but I keep my voice steady. “And what’s that?”

His gaze cuts to mine, and it’s devastating in how honest it is.

“Something I can’t bend,” he says. “Something I can’t control. And I know you’re not a leash. I know the others… they love you. They chose you. And you chose them.”

He swallows hard, the motion tight in his throat.

“But it’s all coming down to me now. Because once you bond with Orin…” He exhales sharply, almost a laugh but not quite. “It’s just going to be me left.” He shakes his head, gaze flicking away as if the walls might swallow him whole. “And I don’t like that. The pressure of what you are. What you mean.”

This isn’t about rejection.

It never was.

This is about Lucien Virelius—who has spent his entire life building walls no one could scale—terrified of being the last one left standing when they all fall.

I don’t want him to slip back into that cold quiet he hides behind, that distance he thinks protects him when all it does is make me want to tear him apart.

So I ask the question that’s been rotting in my chest since the moment he first touched me and pretended it didn’t mean anything.

“And what do I mean to you, Lucien?”

His gaze flickers, jaw tightening, but I don’t stop.

“Because you’re very confusing to me,” I continue, each word carefully measured, the sharp edge of it deliberate. “You run so hot and cold I can’t keep up. You tell me not to touch you, you act like I’m the problem, but then you pull me into your bed and fuck me like you’re starving for me.”

I don’t pause. Don’t soften it.

“And then the next day you’re cold again,” I say quietly, biting each word out, “like you didn’t touch me. Like you didn’t want me. You shut down, push me away, act like I don’t exist.”

I step closer, refusing to give him space to retreat.

“Even Ambrose,” I murmur, “told me exactly where I stood with him from the start. Riven never hid how he felt. Silas would tattoo it on his forehead if I let him. Elias—” I huff, shaking my head. “Even Elias can’t shut up about how stupidly gone he is for me.”

Lucien’s breath shudders out through his nose, sharp, controlled.

“But you?” I press, voice quieter now, sharper. “You won’t say it. You won’t admit anything. You keep me at a distance like it matters, and then you do shit like this—” I glance toward the bed where the kitten is still curled in the sheets, blissfully unaware of the storm brewing in the room. “Like showing up here with a stray and pretending you’re not trying to fix something you broke. You say nice things when you think I’m not paying attention,” I say, my voice sliding lower now, softer but sharper. “You flirt like you don’t mean it. You tell me I can’t leave the damn house without you like I’m yours to guard. All while giving me the fucking silent treatment.”

I watch him carefully, because I want to see him break under it.

I want the truth.

Not the careful distance.