Chapter 6 Burning For You #2
I cross the space between us in a few long strides.
She doesn't hear me coming—too lost in her own devastation, in the desperate reach for that one page just out of grasp, in the roaring of rain and grief inside her head.
My hand extends upward.
My fingers close around the paper she's reaching for.
And I bring it down.
She freezes.
The page flutters between us, held in my grip—cream paper gone dark with water, words bleeding into each other but still partially legible. Something about dreams. Something about hoping he's okay. Something signed S.E. with a small heart dotting the E.
She doesn't turn to look at me.
Doesn't move at all.
Just stands there—rigid, trembling, rain streaming down her face—with her arm still raised and her hand still empty.
For a long moment, neither of us speaks.
The rain fills the silence. The wind makes the remaining letters sway and spin. Somewhere in the distance, thunder rumbles—low and ominous, the storm that's been threatening all day finally arriving in full force.
Slowly—so slowly it's like watching time dilate—her arm lowers.
Her hand drops to her side.
Her head bows.
And I realize, with a flash of fury that nearly chokes me, that she's ashamed.
She's standing in the wreckage of her own heart, surrounded by proof of her devotion and vulnerability, and she's ashamed to be seen.
Ashamed that I've witnessed her grief. Ashamed of the tears mixing with rain on her face and the ruined letters clutched against her chest and the raw, open wound of emotion that she can't hide.
She thinks it's pathetic.
She thinks she's pathetic.
And I want to kill everyone who ever made her feel that way.
I want to find every person who looked at her pain and called it weakness. Every bully who mocked her letters, her pen pal, her desperate need for connection. Every cruel voice that convinced her that caring too much was something to be embarrassed about.
I want to make them suffer.
But that's not what she needs right now.
Revenge can wait.
She can't.
I look at her—taking in every detail of her destroyed state. The way her shoulders curl inward, trying to make herself small. The way her fingers clench around the soggy papers, knuckles white. The way her chest heaves with suppressed sobs, she's trying to swallow.
She's shaking.
Not just trembling—shaking, full-body tremors that have nothing to do with the cold rain and everything to do with the trauma crashing through her system.
She's been broken before.
I can see it in the way she holds herself. The practiced posture of someone who's learned to survive by becoming invisible. The defensive curl of someone who expects every moment of vulnerability to be punished.
Just like me.
Just like the boy I was before my mother died. Before I built walls so high not even light could penetrate.
We're the same.
Both broken.
Both surviving.
Both so fucking lonely that we reached across the void through letters, through anonymous words, through the desperate hope that somewhere out there, someone would choose to know us.
And now she's standing in front of me.
Real.
Solid.
Mine.
The possessiveness of that thought should alarm me. I've known her for hours. Shouldn't be thinking of her in those terms. Shouldn't be feeling this overwhelming surge of she belongs to me and I will destroy anyone who touches her.
But I am.
God help me, I am.
"Look at me, S.E."
The words come out low. Deliberate. The voice I use when I want someone to listen.
She stiffens.
For a moment, I'm not sure she'll comply. She's still standing with her back mostly toward me, head bowed, every line of her body screaming resistance. Screaming don't look at me like this, don't see me when I'm broken, don't—
Then the letters register.
S.E.
Her signature on every letter she's ever sent me.
The initials I've traced with my fingertips a thousand times, wondering who she was, what she looked like, whether she was beautiful or plain or something in between.
I see the moment recognition starts to dawn.
The subtle shift in her posture. The way her breathing changes—catches, stutters, restarts. The tension that was purely defensive becoming something else. Something wondering.
Slowly—so slowly it feels like watching a sunrise—she lifts her head.
And looks at me.
Her face is a watercolor of devastation.
Makeup running in dark rivers down her cheeks. Tears indistinguishable from rain. Mismatched eyes—one blue, one green—red-rimmed and swollen but somehow still fierce. Still burning with that spark of stubborn vitality that refuses to be extinguished, no matter how hard the world tries.
She's crying.
Has been crying.
Is still crying, silent tears leaking from those devastating eyes even as she stares at me with an expression I can't quite read.
Confusion.
Recognition.
Something that might be hope—tentative, terrified, barely daring to exist.
Fuck.
Whether in cynical joy or immense sorrow, whether broken or whole, whether in costume or in ruin—
She is truly a wonder within this cruel world.
Absolutely beautiful.
The most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
And she doesn't even know it.
Doesn't know that she's the only color in my grayscale existence. Doesn't know that I've been reading her letters like scripture for five years, memorizing every word, tracing the loops of her handwriting like they were holy text.
Doesn't know that I would burn empires for her.
Destroy my own pack's mission.
Betray everything I've ever sworn loyalty to.
Just to keep her safe.
What a lethal weakness this Omega’s existence has become…
I move before I can second-guess myself.
My hand reaches out—slow, deliberate, giving her time to flinch away if she wants to—and hooks around the front of her throat.
Not grabbing.
Not squeezing.
Just... holding.
The way an Alpha holds an Omega when they want attention. When they want obedience.
When they want to communicate something primal that words can't quite capture.
She goes perfectly still.
Her pulse hammers against my palm—rapid, frantic, a trapped bird's heartbeat. But she doesn't pull away. Doesn't reach for the blades I know are sheathed at her back. Doesn't do anything except stand there, staring up at me with those ruined eyes, waiting.
My thumb rises.
Traces across her lower lip.
The dark red lipstick she applied so carefully has smeared, bleeding beyond its borders, making her mouth look like a wound. I drag my thumb through the color, spreading it further, marking her with the touch the way her blood marks every letter she sends.
"I've read every single one."
The words come out rougher than I intend. Hoarse with emotion, I don't know how to name.
Her eyes go wide.
Those mismatched irises—blue and green and absolutely devastating—expanding as understanding starts to crash through her.
"Every written piece of work," I continue, my thumb still stroking her lip, her pulse still pounding against my palm. "From the admirer who enjoys sealing her emotional storytelling with four droplets of blood."
A sound escapes her.
Not quite a gasp.
Not quite a sob.
Something in between—the noise of someone whose reality is shifting beneath their feet, who's realizing that the impossible might actually be possible after all.
"It's always four," I murmur. "Every letter. Four drops. Even number. I never asked why, but I noticed. I've always noticed, S.E."
The trembling gets worse.
Her whole body is shaking now—not just with cold or trauma but with the overwhelming force of recognition, of hope, of the terrifying possibility that the person she's been writing to for five years is standing right in front of her.
"You—" Her voice breaks. Cracks. Barely a whisper through rain-soaked lips. "You're—"
She can't finish.
Can't find the words.
Can't do anything except stare at me with those shattered eyes, speechless and trembling and so fucking beautiful it makes my chest ache.
I lean closer.
Close enough that our breath mingles.
Close enough that her scent—cotton candy and rain and the sharp edge of distress—fills my lungs completely.
"I've spent five years wondering what you look like," I breathe. "Wondering what your voice sounds like. Wondering if you were real, or just a figment I created because I was too broken to believe in connection with anyone else."
Her lips part.
No sound comes out.
But I can feel her pulse spike beneath my palm. Can feel the way her body leans toward me, infinitesimally, instinctively—seeking the connection we've been building through paper and ink and blood for half a decade.
"You smell like cotton candy," I tell her. "I caught your scent outside the post office and couldn't get it out of my head. Couldn't stop thinking about the girl who belonged to it. And then you crashed into me, and I saw your face, and I still didn't know."
A tear slides down her cheek.
Or maybe it's rain.
I can't tell anymore.
"Not until Maria mentioned the girl who was crying because she hadn't heard from her pen pal in forty-seven days." My voice drops even lower. "Forty-seven days. Because I was here. Because I couldn't access my mail drop. Because I had no idea you were so close this whole time."
Her mouth shapes my pen name—S.W.—but no sound comes out.
I smile.
It's not a kind smile.
It's the smile of someone who's found what he was looking for after searching for so long he forgot he was searching. The smile of a villain who's just discovered the one person in the world worth being a hero for.
"I finally found you, Sweetness."
Her eyes flutter closed.
A sob escapes—relief or grief or some devastating combination of both.
And then—because I've been wanting to since the moment she crashed into me, since the moment I caught her scent, since the first letter she sent me five years ago that made me believe maybe I wasn't completely alone in this nightmare—
I kiss her.
Not gently.
Not tentatively.
Not the soft, questioning press of lips that asks permission.
This is a claiming.
A declaration.
A promise written in action instead of words.
I kiss her like I've been dying of thirst and she's the first water I've tasted in years.
Kiss her like the letters she's written are prayers, and this is the answer.
Kiss her like the world is ending around us—which it might be, with the rain and the thunder and the ruined pages spinning down from their strings—and this is the only thing that matters.
My hand stays wrapped around her throat.
Anchoring her to me as I pour five years of loneliness and hope and desperate, fragile connection into the press of my mouth against hers.
She tastes like rain.
Like salt from her tears.
Like the dark red lipstick that's now smearing between us.
And underneath it all—sweetness. So fucking sweet.
Cotton candy and cherry blossom and the sharp metallic edge that says she's been through hell and come out the other side with teeth.
Mine.
The word echoes through my skull like a battle cry.
Mine, mine, mine.
The girl who writes letters in blood.
The pen pal who kept me sane when the darkness got too heavy.
The beautiful disaster who's been waiting for me without knowing it.
Mine.
The letters fall around us—ruined pages drifting down from their strings, landing in puddles, dissolving into nothing. The rain pounds against our shoulders, soaking through our clothes, washing away the makeup on her face and the careful composure on mine.
I don't care.
Let it all wash away.
Allow the world to see us exactly as we are—two broken people finding each other in the wreckage, two lonely souls finally discovering the connection they've been building through words and hope and the stubborn refusal to give up.
Mine.
I kiss her harder.
Deeper.
Claiming every part of her mouth the way I want to claim every part of her life. The way I want to stand between her and everyone who's ever hurt her. The way I want to burn down this entire academy and everyone in it just for making her cry.
The villain in me—the one I've cultivated through years of survival, through violence and cunning and the cold calculation of someone who learned early that the world doesn't reward kindness—wakes up with a vengeance.
They hurt her.
They displayed her heart like a trophy.
They made her sob alone in the rain.
They will pay.
Every single one of them.
They will pay with blood and screaming and the understanding that they touched something that belongs to me.
But that's for later.
For now—there's just this.
Her lips against mine. Her scent in my lungs. Her heart beating beneath my palm.
The rain falling around us like the world is weeping in relief that we finally found each other.
I pull back just enough to breathe.
Just enough to look at her—at her smeared makeup and soaked hair and those devastating mismatched eyes that are staring up at me like I'm salvation and damnation wrapped into one.
"Seraphine," I murmur against her lips.
It's a guess. At least, the perfect guess after years of clues and wonders.
Based on her initials, on the way the name feels in my mouth, on the intuition that's kept me alive this long.
She makes a sound—surprised, broken, beautiful—and I know I'm right.
"Seraphine," I repeat, tasting it. Claiming it. Making it mine, the way I'm making everything about her mine. "S.E. My pen pal. My cotton candy girl."
"S.W.," she whispers. The first word she's managed to form since I touched her. "You're really... you're..."
"Sage," I offer. "Sage Wilder."
Her eyes go impossibly wider.
But I don't give her time to process.
Don't give her time to think, to question, to wonder what any of this means.
I just lean back in—
Then seal those lips with a ruthless kiss.