Aria hadn’t meant for the training session to turn into a spectacle, but Nikolai Marek fought like a viper—fast, precise, unrelenting. She needed that. She needed someone who didn’t treat her like she might shatter if he breathed too hard.
The mat floor was cold beneath her bare feet. Sweat beaded at her temples as she dodged Nikolai’s strike, twisting underneath his arm the way Damian had taught her. Nikolai grinned, breathless and impressed, as she swept his leg.
“You’re getting dangerous,” he teased, rolling to his side.
Aria didn’t smile. She didn’t joke. She simply attacked again.
Nikolai caught her wrist, pivoted, and they hit the mat together—she on top of him, knees braced, pinning him by the collar of his training vest. Her breathing thundered in her ears, heart pounding with the thrill of finally controlling the fight rather than surviving it.
Nikolai blinked up at her, stunned, laughing in disbelief.
“Look at you,” he said softly. “You’re going to take this kingdom one day, Aria.”
She froze.
No one but Damian had ever said her name like that—like it meant something sharp and dangerous.
And that was the exact moment the door slammed open.
Silence detonated.
Damian stood in the threshold.
His eyes—normally cold steel—were bottomless black.
His jaw flexed once.
Then his stare dropped to Aria’s straddling position over Nikolai.
And something feral snapped.
Damian didn’t shout. He didn’t speak. He moved.
One second Nikolai was beneath Aria.
The next, Damian had grabbed the man by the back of the vest and hauled him off the mat like he weighed nothing.
Nikolai choked, feet scrambling for balance as Damian slammed him against the cement wall hard enough to rattle the light fixtures.
“Damian—!” Aria shoved herself between them, grabbing his wrists, trying to pry him back. “Stop it, he didn’t do—”
“Get away from him.” Damian’s voice was smoke over flame.
His fist tightened in Nikolai’s vest until the seams creaked.
Nikolai, despite being pressed into the wall by the most feared crime lord in the Syndicate, managed a strained half-grin.
“You always pick the worst moments to walk in, Wolfe.”
Damian’s knuckles whitened.
“Say her name again.”
“It’s her name,” Nikolai hissed. “Not your brand.”
For a heartbeat Aria thought Damian might kill him right there.
Just a single word, a wrong breath, and he would snap Nikolai’s neck.
“Damian!” Aria shoved harder, stepping directly between their bodies. Her palms pressed to his chest, feeling the violent tremor in his muscles. “Back off. Now.”
Damian’s chest heaved. He didn’t move his eyes from Nikolai’s.
He didn’t even blink.
But he did lower his hands.
Barely.
The room stayed thick with the threat he hadn’t unleashed.
Aria exhaled shakily.
Nikolai smoothed his clothes, smirking like a man who secretly enjoyed being near death. “You’re losing your edge, Wolfe. You didn’t even break my nose.”
Damian took a step forward.
Aria shoved him back again, harder this time.
“Enough,” she snapped. “You’re overreacting.”
Damian turned on her so fast she stumbled.
“Overreacting?” His voice was a razor. “You were on top of him.”
“It was training,” Aria shot back. “You assigned him to spar with me. What did you expect?”
Damian’s chest rose and fell like he was trying not to explode. “I did not expect you to let him touch you.”
“If you walk in on training, people touch. That’s how fighting works!”
“Not with you.”
Aria blinked. “Excuse me?”
Damian dragged a shaking hand through his hair, pacing once like a lion that had been shot and didn’t know where to bleed. “I’ve told you—this world isn’t just training, Aria. Everyone wants a piece of you. Everyone wants to use you. And you—”
He pointed at Nikolai with a violent flick of his wrist.
“—do not get to put your hands on her.”
Nikolai folded his arms.
“Then maybe you should tell her she’s not allowed to win.”
Damian lunged again.
Aria grabbed his arm.
This time, he stopped because she touched him.
Just that.
Her fingers brushing his skin.
His breath stuttered. His eyes snapped to hers. She could feel his pulse hammering under her hand like he’d sprinted up fifty flights of stairs.
“You’re jealous,” Aria whispered.
His jaw clenched so hard she felt the tension radiate off him.
“I’m protecting what’s mine,” he said hoarsely.
Aria’s heartbeat skidded.
“You don’t own me.”
Damian stepped closer—too close. His shadow swallowed hers, his breath hot against her ear. “Then why did it feel like my entire body caught fire seeing you straddle him?”
Nikolai cleared his throat.
“I’m still in the room.”
“Get out,” Damian growled without looking away from Aria.
Nikolai smirked and slipped out, whispering as he passed Aria, “You’re in deeper than you think.”
The door shut behind him.
Leaving only the two of them.
Breathing hard.
Standing too close.
Heat sparking between their bodies like live wire.
Aria didn’t back away.
Damian did. One step. Two.
As if distance would stop the thing he’d been drowning in for months.
But Aria wasn’t done.
“You don’t get to dictate who trains me,” she said, stepping forward.
“Yes,” Damian said, voice low enough to bruise. “I do.”
“You don’t get to decide who touches me.”
“I absolutely do.”
“You don’t get to control every breath I take.”
Damian’s eyes locked on hers—dark, wild, hungry. “Then show me,” he whispered, voice shaking. “Show me how you want to be touched.”
The words slipped out of her mouth before she realized she’d said them.
Damian froze.
Utterly.
A tremor rippled through him—from his jaw to his hands to the breath he dragged in like it hurt.
His eyes lowered to her lips.
Then her throat.
Then the collar, glowing faintly with her pulse.
“Aria…” he whispered like he was breaking apart.
She took a single step closer. “You’re the one who keeps telling me to be brave. I’m being brave.”
Damian shut his eyes.
Like breathing hurt.
Like not kissing her hurt more.
When he spoke, his voice wasn’t a command or a threat or a snarl.
It was a confession.
“If I touch you now,” he murmured, “I won’t stop.”
Aria’s breath hitched.
“Then don’t stop.”
His eyes snapped open—fire pouring out of them.
He grabbed her waist in both hands.
Not rough.
Not possessive.
But desperate.
He pulled her flush against him, forehead crashing to hers, their breaths colliding, every nerve in her body lighting up in one violent burst.
His lips hovered over hers.
One heartbeat.
Two.
Three.
Then—
He didn’t kiss her.
He tore himself away like the touch burned him.
Aria stumbled at the loss, chest aching with something wild and unmet.
Damian turned his back, palms braced on the wall, shoulders heaving.
“You don’t know what you’re asking for,” he rasped.
Aria stepped forward.
“Then show me.”
Damian turned, eyes blazing, something feral and undone and unbearably human burning in them.
He didn’t kiss her.
He didn’t touch her.
He walked out the door—
—but that night, when he came back, when the war quieted and the world went dark around them…
He showed her.
Exactly. What she meant.