Page 177 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

And he loved her too much. Too hard.

It was the same and yet different. It was a rush of warmth, of want, of need. And his hands itched to wrap themselves around it, grasp it and not let go. But he knew if he did, he would squeeze too tightly. Crush it, crush her.

He would not crush her.

‘Talk to me,’ she demanded. ‘Scream at me. Tell me this isn’t what we agreed to. This isn’t what either of us wanted. But it has happened. Love. This is love,’ she whispered, and it fell over his skin, draped over his shoulders. It was a heavy thing. A comforting weight.

A lie.

His love was dangerous, and to accept hers… To give her his in return, his love…

It would be a curse.

‘Please, don’t close me out.’

He never should have let her in.

‘This was a mistake, Aurora.’ Bile rose in his throat. ‘I never should have listened to you scream. I never should have come out of the shadows. I never should have shown—’

‘Shown me who you are?’ she interrupted. ‘You never should have shown me the man beneath that mask? You never should have brought me here and shown me the man inside these castle walls is a man who deserves to be loved? You deserve to be cherished, Sebastian. You deserve to be loved, and I love—’

‘Stop,’ he said, but the demand sounded hollow, flimsy.

‘I will not stop,’ she said, her other hand locking around his wrist. ‘We both deserved to be loved. We were made for each other. You were made for me to love you.’

His chest caved in on itself.

If she was meant for him, if he was meant for her, then why did it hurt so much?

Because love was pain.

His love was agony.

And he would not give it to her. All this love inside him. He would not drown her in his feelings, his attachment.

He would not kill her, too.

‘Aurora, release me.’

‘No.’

He had to make her, didn’t he? He had to make her hate him. Run from him and never look back. It was the only way to keep her safe, because now she had named it, the love they both felt, he could not protect her. Life, love, could be ripped away in an instant. It would devastate her as it had him.

It would kill him to lose her love. To lose her to the same hands of fate that had taken Amelia. But better to lose her now than fall deeper.

He moved. Stepped forward into her air. Her scent. So warm, so pure. Soinnocent. And those deep brown eyes looked up at him.

He had brought her here and locked her inside. Shut her away from the world and made her his prisoner because he thought it was the only way to keep her safe.

But he had not been keeping her safe. He had not been protecting her.

He had been protecting himself.

The world sat in the room behind them, in a great hall, and he had dragged her outside. Closed the doors on the people inside.

If he kept her here, she would always be lonely, because he did not belong with people. He did not belong in great halls.

But she did.