28. Lynn #2
“Stop.” I press a hand flat to his chest and push, and he lets me, because of course he lets me, he’d let me do anything. The space I make between us is barely anything and it may as well be a mile. “Just - stop. Let me think.”
He goes still. Naked in the moonlight, locked to me, the most powerful thing for a hundred miles, and he holds his breath and waits for the verdict.
I’m still full of him. I can still feel the thing that opened between us a minute ago, that channel, that flood of his want pouring into me warm and enormous. And that’s the problem. That’s exactly the problem.
“When I walked into that lecture hall,” I say slowly, “and I couldn’t breathe. When I spent a whole night thinking about a stranger’s mouth on my throat. When I signed a contract in glitter pen because I couldn’t make myself say no to you.” My voice is doing something unsteady. “Was that me?”
“Lynn-”
“You said the goddess chose me before I was born. You said the pull was destiny. So how much of it was ever mine?” The question has teeth.
I feel them the second they’re out. “Did I fall for you, or did something reach into my chest and arrange it? Because I can feel you right now, Milo, I can feel how much you want me, it’s pouring off you - and if I’ve been feeling that the whole time without knowing, then I don’t know which parts of the last month were my own heart and which parts were a string being pulled. ”
His face breaks. Not the sweet, wet, moved thing from before. This is worse. A man watching the one thing he was afraid of happen in real time.
“I don’t know,” he says.
It’s the last thing I expected. No reassurance. No it-was-all-real speech.
“I don’t know how much the goddess set in motion, and I won’t lie to you and pretend I do.
That’s why I didn’t tell you.” His throat works.
“Because I asked myself the same thing every night. Whether I’d earned a single minute of it or whether I was just - collecting what was already promised to me.
Whether you’d have looked at me twice if the goddess hadn’t stacked the deck. ”
“That’s not comforting.”
“I’m not trying to comfort you. You asked me for honesty in a contract and I signed it.
” His hand comes up, hovers near my face, doesn’t land.
“Here’s the only thing I know for certain.
Whatever she started - I chose you after.
Every day. When you yelled at me about a pop star I’d never heard of.
When you threw a fire extinguisher at me.
When you walked into a room full of wolves who wanted you gone, with a hamster under your arm, and dared them.
None of that was on the goddess’s list. That was you, being impossible, and me falling anyway. ”
I look at him for a long time.
And I can’t argue my way out of this: I’m the one who came here. I’m the one who got on a bus. Nobody reached into my chest and made me knock on those gates. Whatever was arranged before I was born, the loudest and most stubborn part was all mine.
Maybe I’ll never untangle it completely. Maybe no one who’s loved anyone ever can.
But I’d rather choose him knowing the deck was stacked than pretend it wasn’t and love him anyway. At least this way the choosing is real.
“Okay,” I whisper.
“Okay?”
“I’m still furious. And I’m still going to make you grovel for a month over the part where you sat on this and let me feel insane and one-sided.” I fist my hand back in his hair. “But okay. I’m not going anywhere either.”
The sound that comes out of him is wrecked, and then I grab his face and kiss him, hard and messy and wet with both our tears, furious and choosing him in the same breath.
“I love you.” His voice breaks. “I love you so much it hurts. I’ve loved you since you argued with me about homework in front of the whole class-”
“That was week one-”
“I know.” He’s crying now, fully crying. “I know, and I couldn’t say anything, and watching you fall for me without knowing the truth was the hardest thing I’ve ever done-”
“Say it again.”
“I love you.”
“Again.”
“I love you, Lynn. I’m so fucking in love with you it physically hurts. I can’t breathe when you’re not near me. I can’t think. I can’t-”
“Bite me.”
He freezes.
“The bond,” I say. “It’s not complete, is it? Not until you bite me. Not until we’re fully connected.”
“Lynn-”
“Bite me.” I tilt my head, baring my throat. “Complete it. Make me yours.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”
His eyes flash gold.
His mouth finds my neck.
And then-
Pain.
Sharp, bright, overwhelming, but underneath it, something else. A thread snapping into place. A door flying open. And suddenly I can feel everything-
A month of watching me across classrooms, heart pounding.
The terror of the first challenge, the relief when I didn’t run.
Late nights alone in his study, staring at my photo on his desk, aching with a love he couldn’t name.
The pride when I stood up to Thorne. The fear when the council pushed back.
And underneath it all, through it all, a constant drumbeat: mine mine mine mine mine-
“Oh,” I breathe.
“You feel it?”
“I feel everything.”
Above us, the moon explodes.
Light pours down, silver and blinding, and from the treeline comes a roar, the whole pack crying out in witness, in celebration, in approval-
We’re blessed.
We’re bonded.
We’re both.
Milo pulls back from my neck, his mouth stained with my blood, his eyes full of wonder.
“I love you,” he whispers.
“I love you too.” I pull him down for a kiss, tasting copper and starlight. “I love you too, you ridiculous, secretive, infuriating man.”
He laughs against my mouth.
The knot holds us locked together.
The moonlight holds us in its glow.
And somewhere above, I swear I hear the goddess laughing.