The moon was sharp tonight—silver, slicing, and cruel. I found myself near the cliffs again, where the wind roared loud enough to drown thoughts, or so I hoped. The stone beneath my boots felt brittle, as if one wrong breath could send the rim shearing away into darkness.
But it didn’t drown her voice.
“Why do you keep running from me, Silas?”
I froze where I stood, every muscle locking as if the cold itself had seized me. My hands clenched into fists at my sides. I didn’t turn at first; I held my ground and listened to the rush of the wind. Her presence pressed into me like the bond itself—warm and biting all at once. The scent of iron and rain threaded my pulse.
Raena stepped closer. Her boots crunched over loose stones with a deliberate rhythm. “Don’t pretend you didn’t hear me.”
“I’m not pretending,” I muttered.
“Then answer me.”
“I don’t run.”
“Bullshit,” she snapped. “You run every time I get close. Every time I speak what we both feel. You look at me like you want to touch me—then flinch like I’m a curse.”
I turned finally, jaw locked and breath sharp enough to cut. “You don’t understand.”
“Then make me,” she challenged. “I’m right here. No guards. No titles. Just me.”
We stood toe to toe. Her eyes burned like wildfire—fierce, demanding, too honest. She wasn’t begging; she was calling me out. And I hated how much I wanted to be pulled into that fire, to let it scorch every part of me I still kept buried. The cliff wind shoved at my back like a dare.
“You know why,” I said.
“Say it,” she whispered. “Say it out loud.”
I stared at her for a long, punishing second. “I’m not safe,” I said, voice cracking. “I’m not whole. I’ve spent years unlearning how to feel, how to want. You marked me—without meaning to, yes—but now I feel you everywhere. Every time you enter a room, every time your voice touches me. And I don’t trust myself not to want more than I should.”
Her expression didn’t falter. “Then want it. I’m still standing here.”
“I’ve spent my whole life making sure no one gets close enough to be collateral.”
“I’m not a casualty,” she said. “I’m a choice. Let me be one.”
My mouth parted, but the words tangled on my tongue and refused to form. Heat crawled up my neck; my wolf paced the cage of my ribs.
“You’re not him,” she said, quieter now. “You think I can’t tell the difference?”
The air around us shifted, a subtle change like pressure before a storm. Pebbles rattled near the rim, then went still.
“I would’ve left already if you were,” she added. “You think I didn’t grow up around monsters? You think I don’t know how to spot one? You flinch because you care. He didn’t.”
“You don’t know what it’s like,” I said, breath catching. “To feel rage crawl up your spine and wonder if it’s your father’s voice behind it. To hold back your wolf not out of strength but fear. Fear that once you let it out, it won’t stop.”
“I do know,” she whispered. “I know the ache of becoming everything you swore you’d never be. My father taught me that obedience was love. That control was affection. That power meant isolation. So I became a fortress.”
“And I became a cage.”
She stepped closer, closing the last sliver of space. “Then maybe it’s time we tear the walls down.”
I shook my head, biting back the panic rising in my throat. “If I let this happen—if I touch you the way I want—I won’t know where the line is.”
“Then draw a new one,” she said. “With me, not for me.”
“I’ve had to carry that rage alone.”
“So let me help carry it,” she said. “I am not scared.”
“You should,” I said. “Because I don’t know who I am when I want something this badly.”
Her hand reached up. She brushed the edge of my jaw, slowly, like she expected me to vanish if she moved too fast. My eyes closed without my permission. When they opened again, she was closer—so close I could feel the heat between us burning. The bruise at my neck pulsed once, traitorously hopeful.
“You’re not broken,” she said. “Just scared.”
Our noses almost touched, the distance between us thinned to a breath. The world narrowed to salt air, her pulse, and the pitch-black drop at our backs.
“You don’t have to run anymore.”
I leaned in—without meaning to—drawn as if the wind itself pushed me forward. Her lips hovered over mine, a breath apart. My hands twitched at my sides, aching for contact, for surrender, for everything we weren’t saying.
I wanted to, but I couldn’t. I pulled back, just enough to keep us from falling.
“I can’t,” I whispered. “I’ll break you.”