POV: Rena Vale
The heat hasn’t left my skin yet. Light still hums low under it like a secret I can’t tuck away. Kai’s arms are around my waist, steadying me after the flare, and our faces hover too close—shared breath, borrowed steadiness, that awful, exquisite nearness where one more inch would be surrender.
“I feel like I’m being pulled toward you,” I whisper, because lies would break me faster than what I’m already breaking into.
His fingers tighten, just enough to confess what his voice won’t. “You shouldn’t say things like that.”
Color floods my cheeks. Shame and relief collide in my chest. I take a step back, air rushing in like I’d been underwater—only he catches my wrist, gentle, conflicted, thumb landing soft over the rapid beat he can’t unfeel.
“I’m supposed to stay away from you,” he admits, low, wrecked. “But I can’t.”
My heart trips, then staggers into a new rhythm that doesn’t obey anything except his voice. “Why?”
He swallows. The distance he makes is only in inches; everything else leans. “Because every time I breathe, you answer it.”
“That sounds dangerous,” I manage.
“It is.”
“Then let go,” I say, even as my pulse pleads with me not to mean it.
He doesn’t. His thumb circles once, an apology and a promise I can’t translate. “I’ve spent years mastering restraint,” he says, eyes searching my face like he’s trying to memorize where I fracture and where I mend. “You make it feel like a rope on fire.”
A laugh slips out, frayed at the edges. “You say impossible things and then tell me not to say them.”
“Because I’m supposed to know better.”
“Do you?”
“No,” he answers, honest enough to hurt.
Silence stretches, delicate, buzzing. The cracked line in the mat ahead of us gleams faintly, a reminder of what I did—what I am turning into. In the reflection of his eyes, I see the same truth I felt in my bones: power trying to name me, desire trying to claim me, fear trying to cage me.
“Tell me to go,” I whisper. “If you mean it.”
His jaw tightens. “I won’t say what isn’t true.”
“Then what’s true?”
“That I want you safe.” He exhales, and the room seems to move with it. “And I want you far from anything that would make you choose between breathing and me.”
“You’re not asking for little things.”
“I never do.”
“Is this where you pretend you didn’t almost kiss me?”
He closes his eyes like the word itself is heat. “I didn’t pretend.”
“You stopped.”
“Because if I start…” He opens his eyes again; they’re darker. “I don’t know if I stop where I should.”
“That’s not fair,” I say, softer than I intend. “To tell me you can’t stay away in one breath and warn me off in the next.”
“Nothing about this is fair.” He releases my wrist then, as if the act costs him something sharp. My skin misses him instantly.
I rub the place his thumb had warmed, the ghost of him bright as a bruise. “Last night you told me not to go home. Today you bring me here, hold me through a storm, and tell me you can’t stay away. Kai… what am I supposed to do with all of that?”
“Stay alive,” he says. “Let me keep you that way.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I trust.”
“Trust,” I echo, because the word aches. “I’m trying.”
His mouth—danger and confession—softens a fraction. “I know.”
“Would you have kissed me if no one ever found out?” Boldness tastes like lightning on my tongue.
He considers, bare second. “Yes.”
Breath leaves me like it was waiting for permission to go. “Why does that sound like a promise you hate?”
“Because I do,” he says, blunt. “I hate how much I want to promise you anything.”
“You’re making this worse.”
“I’m making it honest.”
I step forward before I think, drawn by whatever lives between us that ignores sense and schedules. His breath brushes my cheek; the space tilts. “If you’re supposed to stay away,” I ask, “who told you that—your head or your Council?”
“Both.”
“And your wolf?”
A muscle flexes in his throat. “He doesn’t know the word away.”
“That makes two of us,” I murmur.
“Rena,” he warns, so quiet the warning almost sounds like my name said reverently.
“What.”
“Don’t disappear on me again.”
Brow knits. “When did I—”
“On that porch,” he says. “When your eyes went somewhere I couldn’t follow.” His hand lifts, then drops, restraint reasserting itself like a bruise you press to check if it still hurts. “I thought I’d break every door between us to keep you from falling through another one.”
“I didn’t choose the falling.”
“I know.”
“Would you—” Words snag on terror. “Would you have gotten me even if I hadn’t been… this? Luminous. Complicated.”
“Yes,” he says, no hesitation. “You were in trouble. That was enough.”
Heart turns over, exposing a soft, startled underside. “Thank you.”
“You don’t owe me that.”
“I owe me saying it,” I counter, and something like pride flickers in his eyes.
We stand in the hum of lights and the smell of clean mat and the echo of what almost happened. Every breath is negotiation. Every blink is a dare.
Heavy footsteps slam down the hallway like a verdict. The facility’s inner door shoves open; Kai’s advisor bursts inside, face pale under urgency, tablet clutched like a shield.
“Your Majesty,” he says, barely nodding at me before arrowing his gaze to Kai. “Apologies for the breach—High Council demands your presence at the capital. Now.”
Cold pricks over my arms. Kai’s shoulders go steel. “On what grounds.”
“Security motion. Closed session.” The advisor lowers his voice, flicks a glance at me again as if evaluating how much oxygen I deserve. “They’re already convened. The summons is not a request.”
“Of course it isn’t.” Kai looks at me then—truly looks. Something raw lives there, an honesty so stark I want to turn away and can’t. “How long.”
“Your jet’s prepped. Ten minutes to the helipad. Twenty in the air.”
He nods once, the king wrapping around the man in a movement that feels like armor being pulled on while still wet with blood. “Prep extraction protocols for here,” he orders, already moving mentally. “Same team as last night. No footprints.”
“Yes, sir.” The advisor pivots toward the door, already tapping. “Transport will be at the north exit.”
“We’ll use the east,” Kai corrects. “Rotate patterns.”
“Understood.”
The advisor leaves a vacuum behind him. My chest tries to collapse into it.
“What does that mean?” I ask, hating how small I sound.
“That I have to go,” he says, equally hating it. “And that someone will try to make that your problem.”
“Will it be?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“That isn’t a promise.”
“It’s the only one I can give,” he says, stepping closer until the world narrows to his eyes and whatever they say when his mouth refuses. “Stay here until my team arrives. Then go to the address in the envelope on the kitchen counter. Don’t share it. Don’t deviate. If anything feels wrong, call my number and say nothing. I’ll come.”
“You just told me not to disappear,” I whisper, throat thick. “But you’re the one leaving.”
“Don’t twist my line better than I said it,” he mutters, and the almost-smile dies before it reaches his mouth.
“You’ll be back?” I hate the nakedness in the question.
“Yes.” He says it like he means to bend time to make it true. “Don’t make me tear the city apart to find you again.”
“Again?”
His eyes flicker—memory of porch light, the last soft second before I fell out of it. “Don’t disappear on me,” he repeats, rougher. “Please.”
The word lodges in the softest part of me and refuses to budge. “Okay.”
“Lock the door after I go.” He tips his head toward the crack in the mat, then back to my mouth and away, restless. “And stop apologizing for being powerful.”
“I didn’t—”
“You were about to.”
“Maybe.”
“Don’t.” He backs toward the exit, every step a fight between necessity and the gravity that keeps pulling him forward instead. “I’ll send word.”
“I’ll pretend to breathe,” I say, trying for lightness and landing on truth.
“Do more than pretend.”
“Then come back and make me.”
His exhale stutters. “Careful.”
“Or what.”
“Or I stop pretending too.”
“Is that a threat?” I ask, pulse punching at my skin.
“That’s an admission.” He hesitates like the next second might undo him. “Stay where I can reach you.”
“I hear you.”
“Say it.”
“I’ll stay where you can reach me.”
“Good.” He looks at me like the ground shifted under his feet and he chose to balance on me anyway. “Don’t disappear on me again.”
“I won’t,” I say, and mean it too much.
He turns, calls a command I don’t catch into his comm, and disappears through the door—king, storm, restraint—all of it leaving me aching and confused and cracking in ways that have nothing to do with the floor.
Silence presses in, loud with his absence. I wrap my arms around myself, as if that could hold in everything that wants to spill out. The crack in the mat looks like a line I shouldn’t cross and a path I must. I stare until it blurs.
Phone buzzes in my pocket, a knife of sound in the hush. I don’t want to look. I do anyway.
Auren.
Two words sit on the screen, clean, catastrophic: We need to talk. It’s about us.