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I don’t understand it.

I don’t deserve it.

And gods help me, Iwant it anyway.

I drag a hand through my hair, exhaling slow through my nose, willing the thought to dissolve before it settles too deep. I didn’t ask for the bond. When it snapped into place, I wanted to tear itfrom my skin. Rip her name from my soul. It was beneath me, the way I felt it—like a leash I hadn’t consented to. Like she’d infected me.

But now…

Now I sit here in the warmth of a fire shaped by Riven’s hands, watching her lips wrap around the rim of a chipped mug, and I think—fuck—I don’t mind it anymore.

I like her.

Not just the sharpness of her tongue or the way she looks at me when she’s furious. Not just the ache between her thighs or the way her mouth parts when I say something cruel that she secretly likes.

I like the parts of her she doesn’t even realize she gives me. The quiet ones. The ones she thinks go unnoticed.

And maybe it’s more than like. Maybe it’stoo much. And I don’t know what the fuck to do with that. Sex is one thing. I can navigate lust. I know how to play that game, how to use her body to keep myself from thinking too deeply. But this—this need to beseenby her, to be chosen by her when no one else is watching—this is something else.

Something worse.

And I wonder, not for the first time, what I would say to her if we were alone. Would I even let the words leave my mouth? Would I reach for her hand, pull her into the water, press her back against stone and say—mine, if you’ll have me?

Would I tell her the truth? That the bond isn’t chains anymore.

It’s a compass.

And it keeps dragging meback to her.

But the others are here. Laughing. Talking. Breathing down my thoughts like they belong in my head.

I’ve never feared rejection before. Not when I was built to be chosen. To bewanted.By kings and gods and creatures too ancient to bleed. Desire has always been a matter of inevitability—people want what they can’t touch. They crave what doesn’t bend.

But she ruins that for me. Because I’m not untouchable anymore.

Not to her.

And gods, that’s the problem. Because I’ve done nothing to deserve her. I’ve been cruel, strategic, cold. I’ve taken—pleasure, power, space in her bed, in her mind—without offering anything of value in return. I thought it was safer that way. Cleaner. The cost of giving was always too high, so I never paid it.

Until her.

Now I watch her laugh at Silas’s stories and lean her shoulder against Elias’s with that sleepy ease she gives everyone butme, and I feel that lack like a hole punched straight through my ribcage. Hollow, echoing, loud.

I want one of those smiles.

Just one.

The soft ones. The ones that belong to no one but her. The ones she gives so easily to the others. I want to see her look at me like I’msafe.Like I’m not just sharp edges and calculated risk.

I want her towantme without bracing for damage.

Have I earned that?

Gods, I don’t know.

I’ve tried. In the ways I know how. I’ve stood when I could’ve left. I’ve bled when I didn’t have to. I’ve bitten down the worst of my instincts for her. And still, I don’t know if it’s enough. I don’t know ifI’menough. And that—that—is the thing that undoes me more than any blade, any curse, any realm.

The doubt.