Aria wakes before the sun rises, heart pounding from a nightmare that spills into reality. For a moment she can’t breathe—because Damian Wolfe is slumped asleep in the chair beside her bed, head tilted into his palm, body still wearing the same blood-stained clothes he returned in. He didn’t even take off his boots. He didn’t stretch out on the couch. He didn’t lie beside her.
He spent the entire night sitting in a chair just to keep watch.
Her chest tightens painfully. Damian looks nothing like the precise, cold, untouchable king of Wolfe Tower. He looks wrecked. Bruised. Human. And exhausted in a way that makes guilt and warmth twist violently inside her.
His breath flinches when she moves. His eyes snap open instantly—sharp, predatory, terrified.
“Aria.” His voice isn’t a command. It’s a question. A check. A plea.
She sits up slowly, fingers brushing the blanket. Damian scans her entire body in less than a second, his jaw flexing when he sees the bruising along her arm from Sabrina’s knife. His hands curl into fists, knuckles reopening from where he split them the night before.
“I’m fine,” she whispers.
He doesn’t believe her. Damian stands so fast the chair skids back. “You shouldn’t have walked near the windows. What if someone saw—what if someone shot—” His voice fractures. Damian Wolfe doesn’t break. He doesn’t tremble. He doesn’t lose control in front of anyone.
But he’s shaking now.
Aria reaches for him. “Damian…”
He freezes. Every muscle in his body goes still, like her hand is a detonator. Very slowly, like he’s afraid to move wrong, he lowers himself onto the edge of the bed. She sees it now—the swelling along his cheekbone, the cut on his brow, the bruised ribs visible beneath his torn shirt.
“You’re hurt,” she says.
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing.”
Damian doesn’t argue. He just stares at her, breathing too hard, too unevenly, as if he’s been carrying fear in his lungs all night. “Aria,” he says quietly, “don’t ever do that again.”
She swallows. “Do what?”
“Run from me.”
She flinches. His eyes soften—a fraction. Damian reaches out, hesitates, and then cups the side of her face with a gentleness that belongs to a man he no longer remembers how to be.
“When I couldn’t find you,” he whispers, “I—I lost my mind.”
Aria’s throat closes. Slowly, carefully, she raises her own hand and touches his jaw. The moment her fingers graze the bruise at the corner of his mouth, Damian exhales sharply, eyes falling shut like he’s been starving for that touch. She’s never seen him look like this—unguarded, raw, almost breakable.
“You went looking for me,” she says. “You killed for me.”
His eyes open, burning with something she can’t name. “I’ll do worse if I have to.”
“You don’t have to,” she whispers.
“Yes,” he breathes, brushing his thumb along her cheekbone. “I do.”
His injuries pull her attention again—cuts, scrapes, the deep swelling on his knuckles. She reaches for his hands. Damian flinches but lets her take them. Her fingers tremble as she lifts his wrist.
“Damian, these are bad.”
“I’ve had worse.”
“That’s not the point.”
For the first time since she’s known him, Damian looks… embarrassed. “Aria, I don’t—” He swallows, jaw tightening. “I don’t care about the injuries.”
“Then what do you care about?”
He lifts his eyes slowly. The answer is written there—terrifying, undeniable.
“You,” he whispers.
Aria’s breath catches. Damian gently pulls his hands from hers and fists them in the blanket instead, trying to put distance where there shouldn’t be any. “I don’t sleep when you’re not in this tower. I don’t think. I don’t breathe. I—” He stops himself, anger and confession twisting violently together in his eyes. “You make me weak.”
“You’re not weak,” she says softly.
He laughs—a single, broken sound. “Aria. Look at me.” She does. “Everything I did last night? Everything I destroyed? That was because of you.”
She should be afraid. But she’s not. Not anymore.
“Let me treat your wounds,” she says quietly.
Damian stiffens. “Aria—”
“Please.”
That word ruins him. He nods once, jaw clenched, as if agreeing is the hardest thing he’s done in years.
She brings the first-aid kit and sits beside him on the bed. When she gently wipes the blood from his jaw, Damian doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe. His eyes stay on her face the entire time, watching her like he’s memorizing every expression, every eyelash, every tremble in her fingers.
“You should take something for the pain,” she murmurs.
“I only feel one thing right now,” Damian replies. His voice is low, rough. “And it’s not pain.”
The air thickens.
She cleans his knuckles next. Damian inhales sharply when her fingers glide lightly over the broken skin, but he doesn’t pull away. He leans closer—too close. Aria’s pulse quickens. Damian hears it. His gaze drops to her throat, then her lips.
“Aria,” he whispers, voice dangerous. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m allowed to want you.”
Her breath stutters.
Damian raises a hand slowly, sliding his fingers into her hair, tilting her face up. His forehead touches hers, breath mingling with hers.
“If I touch you again,” he murmurs, voice trembling, “I won’t stop.”
Aria’s heart thunders. “Damian…”
He closes his eyes, fighting something violent inside himself. “Don’t say my name like that.”
“Why?”
He leans even closer, lips almost brushing hers. “Because I’ll forget the war. I’ll forget the Syndicate. I’ll forget everything except you.”
Silence burns between them.
Damian’s voice drops to a whisper that barely survives the air between their mouths. “And I can’t afford to forget.”
Aria doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe. Her hand rises, fingers brushing the side of his neck.
Damian shudders—whole body, violently—as if that tiny touch shattered every wall he built.
Their lips don’t meet. But the world tilts toward the moment they finally will.
And Damian, shaking, forces himself backward, gripping the wall so hard his knuckles bleed again.
He doesn’t look away from her.
“If I touch you,” he says hoarsely, “I will ruin us both.”
Aria whispers, “Maybe we’re already ruined.”
Damian’s eyes flicker—fear, desire, surrender all at once.
He leaves the room like he’s running from a battlefield.
Aria sits in the silence he leaves behind, heart racing, knowing one truth:
They are past the point of no return.