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My gaze skitters everywhere but her eyes, too afraid of what I might find there, or worse, what I might feel.

Instead, I look just past her shoulder, and there—Tripp stands motionless in the living room, half-shadowed, half-watchful, the aftermath of something unspoken hanging between them like the last note of a song.

The house feels transformed, thick with the scent of longing and the remnants of secrets exchanged in the dark.

I can’t speak—can hardly breathe—as the reality of what’s been lost and found in this room presses down on me.

Boone’s presence is a steady anchor beside me.

Still, nothing steadies the chaos inside as I stand, suspended, with Remi’s silhouette commanding the world between us and Tripp’s gaze burning from the background, silent and knowing.

And the words tumble from my lips as I smirk, hating myself for what I’m about to do. “I guess that means I owe you a hundred. I thought you were full of shit when you bet me you could get her to sleep with you.”

I don’t breathe. I don’t think. I don’t do anything except look into Tripp’s eyes, watching as horror dawns on his face at my words.

The silence that follows is bottomless, stretching and stretching until I fear it might swallow us all. My heart hammers a frantic rhythm against my ribs, every nerve alight with dread and anticipation. I force myself to steady, to gather what fragments of courage I have left.

Drawing in a slow, deliberate breath, I let the air fill my lungs—cool and sharp, as if it might carve a path through the thicket of guilt and fear inside me. The instant I take that breath, I know whatever Boone was saying was right.

Her scent hits me full force, and I go weak at the knees. It’s not just a scent—it’s a revelation, a tidal wave of warmth and wildness that sweeps through me so suddenly, so completely, my knees nearly buckle beneath the weight of it.

The air is thick with her essence: sweet and sharp as rain on wildflowers, laced with something untamed that calls to the most secret part of me.

It fills my lungs, dizzying and intoxicating, and for an instant, I forget every reason I ever had to keep my distance.

My heart stutters, my skin prickles, and I find myself grasping for balance, stunned by how perfect, how irrefutably right she smells—like home, like thunder, like something sacred I never believed I’d find.

Each second seems to expand, the world narrowing to this single, precarious moment. With trembling resolve, I raise my head. My pulse pounds in my ears, but I find her—Remi—waiting.

For the first time, I meet her gaze and let myself fall into the storm of her eyes.

There, in their depths, I see questions, pain, defiance, and something wild and shining that I’d tried so hard not to see.

I hold her gaze, bracing myself for whatever truth waits there—no longer running, no longer hiding, only breathing and finally, truly seeing her.

My world crumbles around me in an instant as it all clicks into place.

She is our scent match.

Our everything.

And she does something that completely takes me off guard, letting me know that all my thoughts and feelings are for nothing.

In that charged silence, the truth detonates inside me—swift, merciless, undeniable.

Every stubborn doubt, every careful wall I’d cemented over the years, is torn down in the space between her eyes and mine.

I’d spent so long convinced I’d been built wrong, that I was made to stand apart, destined never to belong to the magic the others spoke of in hushed, reverent tones.

But now, with her gaze searing into me, it’s as if the universe itself is laughing at my ignorance.

The bond isn’t a legend or a children’s bedtime story.

It’s real, and it’s here, and she is woven into it so completely that I can barely breathe beneath the weight of certainty crashing through me.

Horror roars up, raw and consuming, at how totally—how disastrously—I misjudged the most important thing in my world. The shame is a living thing, crawling beneath my skin, scraping at every fragile defense I have left.

All this time, I thought I was protecting myself and every one by doubting and holding back. But it was fear, just fear, and now that I know, I would do anything to go back and undo every moment I wasted resisting what was meant to be.

And she—she is not just what we were looking for; she is it .

The missing piece, the force that binds and completes, the answer written in every instinct I tried to ignore.

My horror at being wrong is bottomless, because the magnitude of what I am denying us is only now sinking in: this connection, this belonging, this fierce certainty.

I am stripped bare beneath it, terrified and awed in equal measure, forced to confront the truth that she was always the one, and I let her slip away.

She explodes in a fit of anger, her perfume filling the air, intoxicating me.

But in that instant, as her anger flares and every line of her body sharpens with conviction, I see the truth of her—fierce, unyielding, impossible to diminish.

She stands her ground, radiating a quiet, furious strength that roots her to the floor and hurls my assumptions back in my face.

There is nothing fragile or uncertain about her; she is carved from the same steel that forges legends, holding her pain and her power with equal grace.

I realize, far too late, that I was blind—not to her presence, but to the iron in her spirit.

I mistook her softness for weakness, her silence for surrender, and now, watching her refuse to bend or break beneath the weight of all we have put her through, I see how completely I misjudged her.

Every word I’d doubted, every feeling I’d denied, crumbles in the light of her resilience. She is strength itself, burning bright in the storm’s heart, and I am left breathless—humbled, ashamed, and fiercely, painfully grateful to finally see her as she truly is.