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I glance over at her without loosening my fingers from hers. She keeps her eyes forward, chin tilted like she’s forcing herself to sound casual, but I can feel the weight of the question coiling inside her. “What you said when I was running away… about loving me properly. Did you mean that?”

I stop walking. The world hushes around us—the Hollow’s wild, restless breath slowing for just a moment as I turn to face her. She tries to keep her expression even, but it’s unraveling at the edges, her hurt still stitched into the curve of her mouth, her eyes too careful.

“Yes,” I say, simply at first, like the word alone could hold the gravity of what I mean. But it isn’t enough. She deserves more than that. “I meant every damned word.”

Her throat bobs, but she doesn’t look away. So I keep going, because she’s never going to understand if I don’t tell her the truth—the whole truth.

“I’ve loved you since the moment you walked into that academy, chin up, defiant, mouthing off to Lucien like you had no idea what kind of monsters you’d stepped into the den of,” Imurmur, my voice low, measured. “You were reckless, arrogant, and too bright to belong to a place like that. But you belonged to us the second you walked in, and I knew it.”

Her lips part like she wants to argue, but I don’t let her.

“I didn’t say anything then because you didn’t need another man circling you like a vulture. You needed a friend, Luna. You needed someone who wasn’t trying to own you or drag you under.” My thumb traces along her knuckles as I breathe out a laugh, dark and rough at the edges. “And I knew, if I so much as hinted at what I wanted from you, I wouldn’t be able to stop.”

I lean in just a little, not enough to crowd her, just enough to let her feel how serious this is. “So I stayed patient. I watched you choose them one by one—Elias, Silas, Riven—and I never asked you to choose me. Because I wanted to be the one who waited, the one who loved you without asking for anything back.”

Her eyes flick to mine, too wide, too soft, and she looks like she’s about to fall apart all over again.

I smile then—slow, devastating, gentle. “You’ve spent your whole life with people trying to own you, Luna. I’d rather burn than be one of them.”

Her steps falter, and she glances at me out of the corner of her eye like she’s fighting herself. Her voice, when it comes, is soft and clipped, but it doesn’t hide the flush crawling up her throat. “What I said about your abs… was a lie. They’re more than average.”

I smile slowly, deliberately, savoring it like a sin on my tongue. “I know.”

She glares at me, predictably, beautifully, like she’s trying to claw the words back, but I don’t let her. I tilt my head, eyes dragging over her like a slow caress. “You’re undressing me with your eyes now.”

“I am not!” she snaps, a little too fast, the flush spreading all the way to the tips of her ears.

“Yes, you are, little star,” I murmur, voice silk-wrapped steel. “You’ve been staring since I took my jacket off.”

Her chin juts up, obstinate and irritated and absolutely enchanted. “Am not.”

“You keep saying that,” I say, falling into step beside her, my hand brushing the small of her back with infuriating ease, “but the color on your cheeks says otherwise.”

She huffs, muttering something under her breath about how impossible I am and starts walking faster, as if she can outrun how visible she is to me. As if I haven’t spent centuries reading people far better at hiding their sins than her.

“It’s perfectly acceptable to love my abs, Luna,” I call after her, my voice a low purr laced with amusement. “I think you might want me to rush through this entire courtship nonsense just so you can finally get your hands on me.”

She whirls around briefly, walking backward, cheeks burning, eyes narrowed to slits. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

I give her a slow, deliberate once-over, letting my eyes linger too long, because she’s baiting me now whether she realizes it or not. “You’re the one imagining me naked, little star. I’m just accommodating your fantasies.”

She huffs again, turning on her heel and practically stomping ahead of me now, like she can walk away from the fact that she’s smiling despite herself, that she keeps looking over her shoulder just to see if I’m watching her.

And I am. Always.

The trees thin in the distance, shadows giving way to the faint shimmer of cathedral spires clawing at the horizon—the spiral they all fear, the one she’s agreed to return to with us. I let her walk ahead, let her pretend she isn’t smiling and flustered, whileI tuck my hands behind my back and follow her, patient and deliberate, like I have been since the beginning.

Because she can run, and she can lie, and she can spit venom at every one of us—but I know how this ends.

And it ends with her in my arms.

I let the silence stretch between us, let her stew in the weight of what’s already passed between us, the unspoken promise humming in the air like a storm about to break. Then, casually, deliberately, I say, “Or perhaps I should tell you my fantasies about you.”

She spins, walking backward now, her eyes sharp, suspicious, her lips parted like she wasn’t expecting me to throw that gauntlet down so openly. “You’re not supposed to say things like that.”

I arch a brow, slow and lazy, savoring the flush creeping up her throat. “And why not?”

Her gaze flicks away, then back again, guarded but curious. “Because we’re not sleeping together yet.”