Chapter 9 #3
“It began then.”
Ten years. The number hits me like a punch to the ribs. That and I’m the one who started the whole thing. “You’re telling me you’ve been dealing with that for ten years?”
“Yes.”
“And I’ve never—” I gesture vaguely. “Felt it?”
“No.”
“How?”
His answer is simple. “I contained it.”
I stare at him, because that thing I felt—just for a second—that wasn’t something you just contain. “That didn’t feel containable,” I say.
“It is not easy,” he replies.
There’s no pride or bravado in his tone. Just fact.
I shake my head slightly. “Then how the hell—”
“Discipline,” he says. “Distance. Control.” His voice catches slightly on the last word. “And pain.”
That stops me. “What?” I’m struggling to process everything he’s saying.
He doesn’t look away. “When it is not sated, it causes pain.”
The words settle heavy between us, but my heart stutters at the word sated.
I swallow. Because I felt pain. It was layered under the heat, threaded through it like something constant and biting.
“You’ve been in pain?” I ask quietly, my gut lurching.
“Yes.”
“For ten years?”
“Yes.”
Something twists in my chest. It’s tight and uncomfortable. Familiar in all the worst ways. “And you didn’t think to mention that?” I demand, more severely than I intend.
“It was not your responsibility.”
“Bullshit.”
His expression hardens slightly. “It was not.”
“It absolutely was if I was the reason it started,” I shoot back.
“You are not the cause,” he says. “You are the trigger.”
A humourless laugh punches out of me. “Not helping.”
Silence stretches between us. I drag a hand over my face, trying to get a grip on the sudden mess of thoughts in my head.
Ten years.
Ten years of that.
Of this.
“And just now?” I ask, quieter. “That wasn’t… the normal cycle, was it?”
“No.”
“Then what was it?”
He hesitates before landing the truth bomb: “You.”
I huff a breath. “Right. Of course it was.” It seems I was brought here just to make this Nyxerian’s life miserable. I know enough about fated mates from being in this world for ten years to not bullshit myself. I’m the worst kind of mate.
The tension between us spikes again, but now there’s something heavier under it. Not just heat or want but understanding.
And guilt. So much fucking guilt.
I hate that part.
Because my brain immediately does the thing it always does—goes back, digs up old versions of me, asks questions I can’t answer without hating the outcome.
If I’d known, if he’d told me, would I have done anything differently?
I want to say yes. I want to be the kind of person who would have. But ten years ago, I was barely holding myself together. I was angry and broken and so lost while trying to survive in a world that had ripped everything out from under me.
Would I have chosen him?
Or would I have run harder?
The answer sits somewhere I don’t want to look too closely at.
“Fuck,” I mutter, more to myself than him.
Varek shifts slightly, like he’s about to ease away fully this time. To put space between us again. To lock everything down the way he clearly has been for years.
“I will not allow it to affect you again,” he says, controlled once more. “That was an error.”
Something in me snaps at that. “Don’t.”
He stills. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t do that thing where you shove it all back down and pretend it doesn’t exist,” I say, holding his gaze. “You can’t lie to me, remember? So don’t start acting like that didn’t just happen.”
A flicker—brief, almost imperceptible—moves through his expression. “I am not pretending,” he says.
“Then don’t minimise it.”
Silence stretches between us.
I push, because I know he won’t lie. “If I touch you again, will that happen?”
He presses his teeth together. “Yes.”
The word presses heavy, and my pulse kicks. Does that mean every time I’ve touched him it’s hurt him? Nausea rolls in my stomach. “And if I don’t?” I ask, quieter now. “If I keep my distance like before?”
His gaze doesn’t waver. “It will continue,” he says. “As it has.” Pain is threaded through the words.
“How bad does it get?” I ask.
“It’s significant.”
“That’s not an answer.”
His voice drops, rougher now. “It is constant during the cycle. It escalates with proximity. With contact.” A beat. “With you.”
I swallow. “And if it’s… triggered like that again?” I press.
“It will worsen.”
“How much worse?”
His eyes flare slightly, something darker moving through them. “It becomes difficult to think,” he says. “To focus. To maintain control of instinct.”
That lines up with what I felt. That overwhelming surge. That need.
I drag a hand over my face, exhaling slowly. “Varek,” I mutter. “You’ve been dealing with that for ten years.”
“Yes.”
“And you never said anything.”
“It is not yours to carry.”
“It became mine the second I felt it,” I shoot back.
That does it. I see it. Not because he flinches—he doesn’t—but because something shifts behind his eyes. Something recalibrates.
“You are correct,” he says after a moment. The admission is quiet and absolute. “I did not account for that.”
“No, you didn’t,” I say, softer now.
Silence settles again, but it’s different this time, less defensive and more… open.
I look at him properly. Not as the commander. Not as the male who’s been driving me up the wall for the past month. Just Varek. The one who’s been carrying this alone… because I told him to stay away.
“Why didn’t you break your word?” I ask. “The distance. The rules. You could have.”
He answers immediately. “You did not consent. You were living your life,” he continues, his voice steady despite everything simmering under it. “You did not want contact. I would not override that.”
Even for this. Even for ten years of that.
I let out a slow breath, something twisting in my chest that I don’t have a neat name for. “And now?” I ask again, quieter this time, because this isn’t theoretical anymore.
This is here.
Now.
Between us.
His gaze holds mine. “If you remain close,” he says, “it will continue more often until we are fully bonded.”
The words are low. Controlled. But there’s no hiding what sits underneath them.
Need.
Pain.
Both are tangled so completely, they’re indistinguishable.
“And if we don’t complete the bond?” I ask.
The question comes out quieter than I expect. Less defiant and more… real.
There’s a pause. It’s not long, but long enough for my own thoughts to catch up with me—and that is the problem. Because the moment the words leave my mouth, something else follows right behind them, uninvited and uncomfortable.
What if I leave? The thought hurts.
It’s not hypothetical anymore. Not some distant, impossible idea I tucked away years ago when hope got too expensive to keep. Now we have leads. The scrolls. The research. Solan and Jack actively trying to send someone back.
Home isn’t just a memory anymore. It’s a possibility.
And if it is possible, what then?
I don’t need Varek’s truth-sense to call me out on the direction my head just took. I feel it myself, immediate and undeniable.
If I leave, what does that do to him? To this?
Would this be his life? That heat. That pain. Two days every month, and moments like this tearing through him whenever I’m close, with no end in sight.
Because I walked away.
Again.
Something in my chest twists, hard and uncomfortable.
I drag my gaze back to him. Varek hasn’t looked away. Of course he hasn’t. He wouldn’t.
“You already know the answer,” he says. He’s not even harsh, though I honestly feel like I deserve all his wrath. Sure, it’s not like I actually knew and was like “oh well” and shrugged, but still, I feel like shit.
“Say it anyway,” I mutter, preparing myself for his response.
His jaw works slightly, like he doesn’t want to—but he will. Always. “It will continue,” he says. The words are steady and measured. But there’s no softening them. “The heat will persist. The pain will remain.” A beat follows. “It will not lessen with time.”
I swallow. “And if I’m not here?” I ask, forcing it out. Because if I’m going to ask the question, I need the whole truth.
His gaze narrows slightly. “It will still occur.”
Of course it will.
“Will it be worse?” I press.
A fraction of a pause. Then, he answers, “Yes.”
The word drops like a weight in my gut.
“Why?”
“Because the bond will remain incomplete.” His voice drops slightly, quieter now, but no less certain. “And incomplete bonds do not… settle.”
I huff out a breath, scrubbing a hand over my face. “Right,” I mutter.
Nothing in this place is ever simple. Nothing in us is simple.
I let my hand fall, looking back at him properly. “And you’ve just—what?” I ask, a little harder now. “Accepted that?”
“Yes.”
That twists something in me worse than the answer itself. “Just like that?” I push. “You’re fine with that being your life?”
“I am not fine with it.” The correction is immediate but calm. “I am… prepared for it.”
That’s worse.
“Prepared?” I repeat.
“Yes.”
I stare at him because that word doesn’t mean what he thinks it means. “That’s not the same thing,” I say.
“I am aware.”
“Then why—”“Because it would be your choice,” he replies, cutting me off cleanly, which shuts me up. For a second at least. Because there it is again. That line he won’t cross. Even now. Even knowing what it costs him.
“If you leave,” he continues, quieter now, “it will be because you choose to. I will not bind you to this world through obligation. Or through me.”
Emotion flares in my chest.
Annoying.
Unfair.
Very frustratingly, perfectly him.
I shake my head slightly. “You’re impossible.”
“So you have said.”
“I mean it differently this time.”
“I am aware.”
That almost pulls a laugh out of me. Almost. Instead, I just look at him. Really look. At the control. The restraint. The way he’s here, holding all of this like it doesn’t weigh anything when I can feel exactly how much it does.
Ten years. Ten years of this. And he still says it like my choice matters more.
I meet his gaze again, steadily despite everything twisting under my ribs. Silence lingers again, but it’s heavier now. Not just with tension, but with consequences and possibility and everything sitting right here between us.
And for the first time, I don’t feel like running from it. I can’t. Won’t.
I just feel—
“Right,” I say, more to myself than him.
Because now I know. And now I can’t pretend I don’t.
I meet his gaze again, steady despite everything twisting under my ribs. “Then maybe,” I say slowly, “we stop pretending this doesn’t need dealing with.”
The bond hums. It feels warm and alive. It feels like it’s waiting.
I hold his gaze for a second longer, then tilt my head slightly, insistence slipping into my voice. “Tell me something,” I say.
His focus narrows instantly. “What?”
“If you stop holding it back,” I say, keeping my tone level even though my pulse has kicked up again, “if you don’t contain it like you’ve been doing…” I let the words hang for half a breath before finishing them. “What happens?”
Varek goes very still. Not the controlled stillness he usually wears like armour, but something tighter. His jaw flexes, and for a moment, I think—hope, maybe—that he’ll deflect. That he’ll soften it. Give me something easier to sit with.
But he can’t. Not with me.
His voice, when it comes, is lower. Rougher. Stripped of the careful distance he’s been holding onto. “It will intensify.”
The words settle between us, heavy and deliberate.
“In what way?” I press.
His gaze doesn’t leave mine. “The heat will deepen,” he says. “The need will override restraint more quickly. Instinct will take precedence over reason.”
My breath shifts, but I don’t look away. “And the pain?”
“It will sharpen,” he replies. “Until it is… resolved.”
Resolved.
That word hits differently. It seems infinitely more final… more dangerous.
“And me?” I ask, because I already know the answer but I need to hear it anyway. “What happens to me?”
There’s the smallest pause.
“You will eventually feel my pain,” he says. “I will struggle to contain it all the time.”
I swallow. “The pain will be like before?”
“No.”
That gets my full attention.
His eyes flare slightly, something deeper moving through them now. “Stronger.”
The bond pulses at that, like it’s reacting to the truth of it, a low, steady thrum that forms under my skin and refuses to be ignored.
I let out a slow breath, my thoughts tangling in ways I’m not even going to try to unpick right now. “Okay,” I murmur, because of course it would be.
Nothing about this is halfway. Nothing about him is.
I drag my gaze over him again, taking in the tension he’s holding, the control that’s clearly costing him more than I realised. Then I look back up at his face.
“Yeah,” I say softly. “We’re definitely not ignoring this anymore.”
The bond hums in agreement. And this time, neither of us pulls away.