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Orin’s mouth curves slightly. Not a smile. A warning. “You don’t have to crave me, Luna.”

“I know,” I murmur. “You wait. Youletme.”

“I won’t always,” he says, and the promise in it makes something hot unravel at the base of my spine.

There’s something deeply, cosmically unfair about how calm he is.

Orin doesn’t pace. Doesn’t fidget. Doesn’t blink more than necessary. He doesn’t look over his shoulder like the others, doesn’t reach for me unless it’s toground—not provoke, not manipulate. Justanchor.And somehow that’s worse.

He’s standing half in shadow, the collar of his coat soaked through at the shoulders, silver strands of hair damp where they brush the line of his jaw. Rain clings to him like an afterthought. It hasn’t touched him. Not really.

Meanwhile, I feel like a wreck. There’s a smear of mud near the hem of my coat I don’t remember getting. My braid’s unraveling. I’m ninety percent sure I’ve got a leaf stuck somewhere in the back of my shirt. And the longer Orin watches me like I’m worth dissecting down to the last breath, the more I start spiraling.

Do I have something in my teeth?

Gods.

None of the others ever made me feel like this. Not even Lucien, and he’s a walking, weaponized catastrophe. With him, it was rage and fire and obsession masquerading as strategy.With Elias, it’s chaos and comfort and lust all tangled up in the same kiss. Even Riven, who sees me like he built me himself, doesn’t make mystomach flutterlike it’s trying to climb out of my throat.

But Orin—He just looks at me. Still. Silent. And it’s all I can do not to fidget like a child under a spotlight.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” I ask before I can stop myself, voice tighter than I mean it to be.

His brow lifts, slow and deliberate. “Like what?”

“Like you’re trying to figure out where I’ll split.”

That gets the faintest curve of his mouth. Not a smirk. Not even amusement. Just… acknowledgment.

“I already know where you’ll split, Luna.”

I go still.

He steps toward me. One pace. Measured.

“The question,” he continues, “is who you’ll let watch when it happens.”

My breath stumbles. That’s all it takes. One sentence. One look. The soft, graveled weight of his voice pressing into the space between us like it was made for me.

I glance away, which is a mistake, because I feel him move again.

Another step.

He stops just short of touching me, his height casting a kind of hush across my shoulders. I feel it like a shadow that wants to be shelter. His hand doesn’t reach out, but I swear I can feel the heat of it hovering near my waist. Not a threat. Not a question. Just apresence.

“I make you nervous,” he says. It isn’t a boast. It’s an observation.

“Yes,” I whisper.

His head dips slightly, so close I feel the brush of his breath near my cheek.

“Good.”

That one word hits lower than it should. Sharp and knowing. Like he’s been waiting for me to admit it. I want to say something clever. Something scathing or dismissive. Something that proves I’m still in control of this moment.

Instead, all I manage is, “I think I hate you a little.”

He hums low in his throat. “You’ll learn to live with it.”