“I trusted you,” Raena snarled, her voice trembling with rage. She stepped in front of the fire altar like she might stamp it out with her bare feet. “And you were just going to burn me out of you like I was a mistake?”
I couldn’t breathe; the fire behind her crackled and threw sharp gold across her face. Her jaw was clenched, and her fists shook with a violence I had never seen from her—not in battle, not even when she nearly killed a man for insulting me in the ring.
“I wasn’t—Raena, I wasn’t going to go through with it,” I said quickly, far too quickly. “I came here because I—I didn’t know what else to do. I thought if I could—”
“If you could what?” she demanded. “Erase me?”
“No,” I said, voice breaking. “I came here because I was scared.”
Her lips twisted. “Scared?”
I stepped toward her on instinct, but she lifted her hand in warning, and the space between us thickened with hurt until it felt almost solid.
“I’m not scared of you,” I said, softer now. “I’m scared of what I want. How much I want you. I don’t know where I end and you begin anymore, Raena. I feel you in my head, my chest, my blood—gods, even when I sleep, you’re there. And part of me—” I stopped, swallowing the burn that rose in my throat. “Part of me is terrified I’ll lose myself.”
She blinked once, slow and deliberate. “You’d rather cut me out of you than risk that.”
“I thought I was protecting you,” I said. “I thought if I removed the bond, I could want you without it being… fate.”
She took a single step closer, and when she spoke her voice dropped—dangerous and low. “And did it ever occur to you that this bond lives in me too?”
I froze where I stood.
“You think this only hurts you?” she asked. “You think this only burns you alive at night? Silas, if you sever it, I won’t just lose you—I’ll lose part of my wolf. Do you understand that?”
“I didn’t…” I couldn’t finish the sentence; the words failed and fell away.
“No. You didn’t,” she said, cutting me off, eyes shining now. “You didn’t think. You decided. Alone. Like I didn’t matter.”
“That’s not fair—”
“Fair?” she snapped. “You think fair matters? You planned to kill the only thing that tied us together and didn’t even tell me. You stood here and bled for the right to forget me.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Then what was it like?”
I opened my mouth and closed it again, useless. There was nothing I could say to make this feel like anything but betrayal.
“I love you too much,” I said, desperate now. “And I don’t know how to survive that.”
Her breath caught, and then she laughed—a single bitter, broken sound. “So your solution is to run? To light a fire and disappear into ash?”
“I thought it was mercy.”
“You thought it was easier,” she spat. “You thought I’d be too strong to break. But I’m not. I’ve been holding the line for both of us for weeks, Silas.”
I swallowed hard. “I never meant to—”
“To what? Make me feel disposable?” Her voice cracked then, just barely. “You tell me you love me, and then try to gut the one thing that binds us. How does that make sense?”
“Because love isn’t enough if it destroys the person I’m trying to protect,” I said. “And with you… it’s not gentle, Raena. It’s fire. It’s war.”
“Then fight with me,” she whispered. “Don’t burn me out and call it love.”
The flames crackled louder between us, and her eyes shimmered—not with tears, but with fury braided to something deeper, something like heartbreak trying not to shatter.
“You should’ve told me,” she whispered.
“I know.”
“You should’ve let me fight for you,” she said, voice shaking. “Because I would’ve. Even if you pushed me away. Even if it hurts. I would’ve stayed.”
She turned on her heel and walked toward the cave’s exit, shoulders tense and spine rigid with resolve. I wanted to follow her—gods, I wanted to drop to my knees and beg—but I didn’t move. My body felt nailed to the stone.
She stopped just before the threshold and didn’t look back.
“I don’t regret marking you, Silas,” she said quietly. “But I regret believing you’d hold onto me the same way I did.”
And then she was gone.
The fire still burned, and my blood still stained the altar. I stood in silence, shaking as the heat licked at my skin. The Seer stepped into view from the shadows, her silhouette long and thin against the stone.
“You just lost something rare,” she said. “And you may not get it back.”