"I’m leaving."
I turned away, my voice cutting through the still air like the crack of glass. My hand trembled slightly at my side as I moved toward the stairs, eager to escape the storm that was brewing between us.
"You ask why?"
The sound of his voice froze me mid-step. I didn’t turn around. I couldn’t. My body betrayed me, my feet rooted to the floor as though the air itself had hardened around them.
"You ask why I care..."
The silence that followed was suffocating. Even the wind outside seemed to hold its breath. My lungs constricted, each inhale scraping cold needles into my chest. It was the kind of quiet that hurt to breathe in.
"Because I hate it."
My knees weakened. The words were jagged, pulled from somewhere raw. Hate what? I wanted to ask, but my lips refused to move. Every part of me was rigid, terrified that if I faced him, he’d see too much. The trembling, the confusion, the ache that I refused to name.
"I hate to see you in the arms of other men."
My eyes widened. The confession struck me hard.
"I hate to think you’d willingly become one of their mates."
A footstep echoed. Then another.
My fists, once clenched at my sides, slowly loosened as strength drained from my limbs.
"I fucking hate it."
Another footstep. Closer this time.
I wanted to run. But a part of me, a dangerous, betraying part, wanted to stay. And that part won.
"There’s no way in hell I’ll let you be touched by another man again, Vivien."
My breath caught. My vision blurred as tears welled up, trembling against my lashes.
Before I could form a single word, a hand slipped around my waist, firm and possessive. He turned me toward him with a gentleness that contradicted the chaos in his voice.
I gasped. He was so close now I could feel his breath ghosting against my cheek.
"What..." what do you mean by that?
Rion’s face was unguarded for once. No mask of control, no trace of the usual restraint that made him untouchable. His crimson eyes burned, not with fury this time, but with something darker... yearning so fierce it almost looked like pain.
The dim light framed him in shades of shadow and red, glinting off the edge of his sharp jawline. His pupils, dilated and wild, darted between my lips and my eyes as if he were fighting every reason not to touch me.
He looked like a man stripped bare of his armor, standing at the edge of a truth he could no longer contain.
When his knuckles brushed my cheek, the warmth seared me.
"You can’t even think of another man," he said softly, his voice trembling with restrained power. "Do you understand?"
It wasn’t just a command, it was a plea wrapped in dominance, an ache disguised as authority.
His deep, crimson pools swallowed the light around us, filling me with equal parts dread and desire. My pulse stuttered, and the logical part of me screamed to push him away, to remind him and myself what he was doing.
"I am not yours," I managed to say, my voice laced with venom that didn’t match the tremor in it.
How could he say that? How could he confuse me when all he’d been planning was to mate with the Celestial Wolf?
He shouldn’t be telling me these things. He shouldn’t be making me hope, making me imagine a place in his life where I could stay.
I didn’t want a part of his heart. I wanted to claim all of it.
That greedy thought twisted inside me like a sin I didn’t dare confess. But even so, I couldn’t pull away from it. From him.
"You were mine from the very first night you stepped into my land, Vivien."
His voice dropped low, dark silk threading through the air. His knuckles brushed along my jaw, trailing down the curve of my neck – slow, sensual, sinful. My pulse stuttered under his touch. It wasn’t fair how easily he could turn me into something fragile.
"So that’s it, then?" I bit out, the words tasting like poison on my tongue. "You want me to be your woman while the Celestial Wolf is still out of reach?"
His lips curved just slightly. Not in amusement, but something close to satisfaction. It infuriated me.
"You want to be the only one, huh?"
I turned my face away, but his fingers caught my chin, guiding it back until our eyes met. The look he gave me burned. It was the kind of gaze that stripped a person bare, the kind that could ignite or destroy depending on which side of his desire I stood on.
His eyes were wild fire and I was standing in the center of it, helplessly drawn to the blaze.
"Can’t you feel it?" he murmured.
"Feel what?" My voice cracked, betraying my confusion.
He tilted his head, studying me.
"Didn’t you feel it when I danced with you tonight? Something changed, Vivien."
Changed? I didn’t understand what he meant, what change he was talking about.
"Why can’t you just tell me what you mean?"
He took my hand then, so suddenly I gasped, and placed it flat against his chest. His skin was fever-hot beneath the fabric, his heartbeat thrumming wildly beneath my palm.
"Do you feel that?" His words came out rough, unsteady. "I can feel it... our connection."
I frowned. "As keys to the Undersea Tower?"
He shook his head. The seriousness in his expression rooted me to the spot.
"As mates."
As mates.
Mates.
My breath left me in a rush.
For a moment, the world shrank into silence. I stared at him, my lips parted but no sound came out. Mates. The word echoed in my head.
"What are you saying?" I finally managed, barely above a whisper.
"I always knew there was something between us," he said, his tone quieter now. "From the moment we met, I felt it. I thought it was because you were one of the keys. But tonight, when I saw you dancing with those males, when I touched you, the bond... it snapped into place."
His hand tightened around mine. I felt the faint tremor in his fingers, as though he was fighting not to fall apart right in front of me.
It wasn’t just want. It wasn’t just desire. It was need – raw, all-consuming, terrifying.
"We are fated mates, Vivien."