6. Sky #4
"My choice." Her voice stays quiet. That makes it worse. "You keep saying wife like it settles something. Last night, you used your body to make me say what you had already decided was true."
Every instinct reaches for an answer. *I love you. I asked before I marked you. You said yes. The bond is real.* All true. All useless. Truth without timing becomes another weapon.
"I am sorry," I say.
She laughs once, softly, without humor. "I know."
"I thought—"
"Don't."
I stop.
She nods, as if that single obedience matters more than the apology. "That. More of that."
I breathe through the ache opening beneath my ribs.
"I thought if you acknowledged the bond, we could stop pretending it was not part of every decision," I say carefully. "I did not understand that asking then turned the bond into another decision I controlled."
"You didn't ask." Her gaze holds mine. "You demanded."
The correction is deserved.
"Yes."
Her eyes shine, but she does not cry. "That's why this hurts more.
Yesterday, you made decisions with your brothers and told yourself you were protecting me.
Last night, you used your body to do the same thing.
Softer. Hotter. Harder to refuse. But still you deciding what truth needed to be spoken and when. "
"I renewed the pattern."
"Yes."
The word is small. It ruins me.
For a long moment, the only sounds are the radiator clanking in the wall and the city waking beyond her window. My fever is better. The bond no longer screams. That improvement feels obscene now, like I stole relief from her at a price she named only after I spent it.
"I will go," I say.
Her shoulders drop, the smallest release. That, too, teaches me.
I rise from the bed, dress without ceremony, and force myself not to straighten the nest, not to fold my shirt, not to make her room more orderly because disorder troubles me. This is her space. Her aftermath. She gets to decide what remains where.
At the door, I turn back. She stands near the bed, robe wrapped tight, chin lifted. My mark is dark on her throat. Her eyes are clear.
"I will not ask you to believe me," I say. "Not after last night."
"Good."
"I will not use the bond as proof again. If you ever call this real, if you ever call me husband or mate or anything else my blood is arrogant enough to want, it will be because you choose the word with a clear head and no part of my body inside yours."
Her mouth trembles, then firms. "That's a start."
It is not forgiveness. It is not hope. It is a door left unbarred, not open.
For now, it is more than I deserve.
I leave before my body can convince me to beg.
The hallway smells of dust and old paint.
Morning light waits beyond the lobby, ordinary and rude.
The fever has receded, but the bond feels different now.
Not healed. Quieter in the way a room goes quiet after something breaks and everyone hears the pieces settle.
On the subway back to Manhattan, I stand among humans headed to work, my shirt wrinkled, my back scored by her nails, my throat aching with words I no longer trust myself to say.
I do not plan how to win her. That impulse belongs to the man who arrived last night believing need could become permission if it burned hot enough.
Instead, I think about what I know how to do.
I know how to protect. I know how to build walls before enemies find the door. I know how to reroute danger, silence threats, buy companies, move resources, force outcomes, and make the world safer by the sheer brutality of deciding faster than anyone else in the room.
I do not know how to ask my wife what kind of life she wants before I start constructing it around her.
That ignorance has become the most dangerous thing I own.
At the next station, I take out my ring. Zymlor's missed calls glow first. Bryklor's. Palace channels. A dozen consequences waiting for a prince who has marked a human Omega and failed to understand that her yes contained less information than his vow required.
I open a blank message and stare at it for a long time.
*How does a Layn Alpha protect his mate without deciding for her?*
The answer does not come from my brothers. I do not send it to them.
The answer comes from memory: Beatrice's tired eyes in the gray morning, her robe clutched closed, her voice quiet enough to cut deeper than shouting.
*You demanded.*
The train doors open.
I step onto the platform with the message unsent. Athena waits. Layn waits. My father will wait poorly. My brothers will make comments. The company will require decisions. The crisis will not pause because my wife has broken me open and shown me the flaw in the machinery.
For the first time in my life, I do not mistake reality for permission.
The bond is real. The mark is real. The marriage, by Layn law and blood and everything my body knows, is real.
But none of that gives me the right to walk ahead and call it protection.
I climb the station stairs into the cold morning air, carrying the only strategy that does not feel like another theft.
Ask. Wait. Listen. Then build.
I hate it already.
Good.
That probably means it is necessary.