The first thing I felt was warmth.
The second was him.
Draven's arm was wrapped around my waist, his body molded against mine, strong and still.
His bare chest pressed to my back, the steady rhythm of his heartbeat thumping against my shoulder blade. One of his legs was tangled with mine beneath the sheets, the coarse hair on his calf rough against my skin.
The room smelled of him—earth and pine and leather and the faintest trace of last night's heat, still clinging to the sheets like smoke after a fire.
I blinked slowly, the morning light casting soft golden rays across the wooden floor. My body ached in unfamiliar ways—a dull soreness deep in my hips and in the places he'd touched, kissed, claimed.
My lower back held a tender stiffness, and my thighs felt heavy, as though the muscles had been wrung out and left to dry. But it wasn't unpleasant. It was a reminder. A memory pressed into flesh.
Of him. Of us.
I shifted slightly, and Draven stirred behind me, his arm tightening across my stomach, pulling me back against the solid wall of his chest.
"You're awake," he murmured, voice low and rough with sleep.
I smiled. "Barely."
He leaned in, pressing a kiss to the back of my shoulder, his lips warm and unhurried against the skin. "Good. I was just lying here trying to figure out if it was safe to move. Didn't want to wake you."
"I wasn't going to sleep forever."
"I wouldn't have minded."
I turned to face him, and his eyes—still dark with sleep, half-lidded—softened when they met mine. His hair was disheveled, falling across his forehead in a way that made him look younger, less guarded.
The hard lines of his jaw and cheekbones were gentler in the morning light, and the scars on his chest caught the gold like threads of silver.
"Hey," he whispered, brushing a strand of hair from my cheek. "How are you feeling?"
The question was so gently spoken that it made my throat tighten.
"A little sore," I admitted, heat climbing the back of my neck.
His expression shifted immediately—concern tightening his features, brows drawing together. "Did I hurt you?"
"No!" I reached for his hand, lacing our fingers together against the sheets. "No, Draven. Not at all. I mean… it was intense, and yes, it was my first time. But you were—Goddess—you were perfect. It felt... good. Really good."
He relaxed at that, a slow smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Yeah?"
"Yeah."
Silence lingered between us, not heavy or uncomfortable—just full of everything unsaid. His thumb traced lazy circles across my knuckles, and I could feel the warmth of his body radiating into mine like sunlight through glass.
Hyde was quiet in the back of my mind, curled and content in a way I'd never felt from him before—settled, finally, like a wolf who had found his den after wandering for years.
Until it couldn't be unsaid anymore.
I stared at his chest for a moment, at the scar that ran diagonally across his left pectoral, then back up at his face. "There's something I need to tell you."
His smile faded, but only slightly. "Okay."
I swallowed, the words building in my chest like pressure behind a dam.
"Before you—before last night—I didn't think I deserved anything good. Not love. Not safety. Definitely not someone like you. I've always been told I was wrong—too quiet, too strange, too broken. And I started to believe it. That I didn't deserve to be loved unless I earned it through pain. That maybe I wasn't meant to be wanted at all."
Draven's jaw tensed, the muscle there flexing visibly, and his grip on my hand tightened like he could take the words from me and carry them himself—absorb the weight of them so I wouldn't have to.
"But you proved that wrong," I continued, my voice steadier than I expected. "You didn't just want me—you saw me. And when you touched me, you didn't make me feel small. You made me feel powerful. Like I mattered."
Tears welled at the corners of my eyes, but I smiled through them. "You made me believe that maybe I can be loved. Am loved."
He didn't speak immediately.
He pulled me close instead, burying his face in my hair, wrapping both arms around me so tightly that I could feel the thud of his heart against my sternum—fast now, unsteady, the heartbeat of a man trying to hold himself together.
"You are," he whispered fiercely. "Atlas, you are."
I pressed my face into the warm hollow of his throat and let myself breathe him in—pine and woodsmoke and the salt of his skin. My hand found the center of his chest, palm flat over the scar, and I held it there like I was holding something fragile.
After a moment, he shifted, lifting my chin with two fingers so I had to meet his eyes. "You want to know the truth?" he asked. "Loving you is the easiest thing I've ever done."
My breath caught.
"You didn't just wake something in me," he said, his voice rough and low in a way that had nothing to do with sleep anymore.
"You healed something which I didn't think was possible. After what I lost. After who I was before I met you—I thought whatever was left inside me was too broken to fix. That I didn't deserve more than duty and silence."
His thumb brushed a tear from my cheek.
"But you," he breathed, "you gave me something to fight for again. You reminded me that we don't survive just to keep breathing—we survive to find this. To find love, real love. And even after the worst, even when everything else falls apart, we keep fighting for what matters."
I couldn't hold back the tears then—not out of sadness, but something deeper. Something whole. Something that felt like the first time I'd ever been held without flinching, the first time someone's arms felt like a place I was allowed to stay.
"You inspire me, Atlas," he said. "And I'm done keeping it quiet. I want people to know. All of them. I want the world to see that the strongest person in my pack is mine—and that I'm his."
I laughed through the tears. "You're mine, huh?"
He grinned, that rare, unguarded grin that only ever surfaced when we were alone. "No take-backs."
I kissed him then—soft and slow, pouring every ounce of my heart into it. His hand cupped the back of my neck, thumb resting against my pulse, and I could feel him smiling against my lips.
Because for the first time in my life, I believed it was okay to be held. To be loved and to belong.
And I would fight for that. For him, for us. Forever.