Chapter 1 #2
If that were true, he wouldn’t be standing. I shove the thought away before it can take shape, the bond biting.
That’s the part no one warns you about. Or maybe they do, and I wasn’t listening because I’d already decided I wanted no part of any of it.
The first bond had formed when Varek killed Thomas.
Saved me, some would say. Claimed me, some of the old texts would probably call it. Bound our fates together in blood and protection and whatever ancient magic or biology or curse makes mates out of strangers.
I didn’t ask for it.
Then weeks ago, when we were escaping after all the chaos at the citadel, a guard took aim at Varek from the wall. I saw the arrow nock, saw death lining itself up neatly with his heart, and I threw before I even thought. My dagger went into the guard’s throat. Varek lived.
And the second bond forged.
That one hurt worse.
Apparently saving each other is romantic in the most deranged way imaginable.
Varek’s gaze settles on me. “You are in pain.”
“No, I’m delighted.”
He doesn’t rise to it. “Let me help.”
“I don’t need help opening a crate.”
“You already opened it.”
I glare.
He waits, which somehow makes it worse. He has this infuriating stillness when he thinks he’s right, like he can outlast any argument on principle. He probably can. He’s had close to a century to practise being unbearable.
I grip the sack and tug it free, avoiding his hand this time. “I can carry grain by myself, too, thanks.”
“You are still angry with me.”
“No shit.”
“For helping?”
“For existing in my space.”
His expression barely shifts, but something there becomes almost settled. “It is also my space.”
I hate when he’s reasonable. Even more, I hate that he’s right.
The warehouse was mine first, in the loosest sense possible.
A bolthole I found and made liveable. Hidden enough to work, central enough to be useful, ugly enough no one important looked twice at it.
After Kael and Sonny—and the new shiny bond—it became the place that I returned to because there weren’t many options and because I knew its weak points and secret entrances better than anyone else.
Then Varek stayed.
Despite me telling him not to.
Repeatedly.
At first because his presence was a risk. Guards had seen him. Too many people knew his face now. If he led trouble here, everyone under this roof would pay for it.
Then because the bond made distance feel like being flayed from the inside, and I didn’t want to think too hard about what that meant.
Now? Now he’s simply… here. Sleeping in the room across from mine. Repairing broken hinges before I can get to them. Bringing back kills from the wilds. Standing too close. Watching me with that endless, unreadable devotion I never asked for and don’t know what to do with.
I heft the grain sack to my shoulder with a grunt. The joint protests immediately.
Varek stands in one fluid motion. “I will carry it.”
“I said no.”
He steps in front of me before I can move away, not touching, just there, a wall of male and heat and stubbornness. The closer he gets, the worse it is… this awareness that won’t piss off when he’s near. It’s like standing too close to a live wire. My skin prickles. My pulse jumps.
My body moves forward—traitorous, instinctive—and I hate it.
I lean in anyway. Just to prove I can. Just to prove this thing between us doesn’t get to decide what I do.
“Your shoulder is injured.”
“I’m annoyed. Different condition.”
“You are both.”
I tip my head back to glare at him properly. “Do all Nyxerians think bossing people around counts as charm?”
His gaze drops to my mouth for the briefest second, then rises again. “No.”
That one word lodges low in my belly with an unpleasant amount of force.
I despise this. I despise him. I despise my own body most of all.
Because the thing is, I can hate him for what he did and still know he did it to save me.
I can be furious that he took my choice and still know Thomas would have killed me eventually, whether by fist or fear or the slow erosion of every part of me that once believed I deserved kindness.
I can resent the bond, resent how Varek’s violence remade my life in a single heartbeat, and still wake in the middle of the night aware of the room across the hall and feel safer because he’s in it.
That doesn’t feel fair either.
I shift the sack and try to step around him. He moves with me.
“Varek.”
“Pax.”
His voice when he says my name has changed over time. It’s less careful now. Less like he’s handling a fragile thing he doesn’t trust himself not to break. There’s warmth in it. Possession, too, though he tries to hide that part for my sake.
I hear it anyway.
“Move.”
“You are hurting yourself to prove a point.”
“And?”
“This is not strategic.”
“I’m not trying to be strategic.”
That almost-smile again, gone in a flash. “So I gathered.”
And there it is, the reason it’s so bloody hard to stay properly angry with him all the time. He sees too much. Says too little. And when he does speak, half the time it’s something so dry, I almost laugh before I remember I’m cross.
I lean in again slightly because I’m not small and I refuse to be physically intimidated by a male who looks like he was sculpted by a very horny war god. “Move, or I’ll bite you.”
His eyes flare brighter.
The air changes.
Damn it.
I feel it at once, that answering pull low under my skin, heat curling through me where there should be none. The bond stirs like it’s been waiting for any excuse at all. Varek goes utterly still.
I did that.
Fucking brilliant.
For a moment, neither of us breathes. Then, very carefully, he steps aside.
“Thank you,” I say with icy dignity, as if my heart isn’t trying to kick through my ribs.
I march past him with the grain sack on my shoulder and every nerve in my body lit up.
The warehouse opens out towards the back, where I’ve turned one corner into storage proper: shelves scavenged from abandoned shops, baskets, jars, hooks, the table where I sort anything worth keeping.
Light spears through a high cracked pane and lays a pale bar across the floor. Dust drifts in it like lazy gold.
I dump the sack onto the table and flex my fingers. A second later, Varek sets the other sack beside it.
I whirl. “Where did you—”
“The crate.” He folds his arms.
“I told you no.”
“You were occupied.”
“You’re impossible.”
“Yes.”
Again, I nearly laugh. I catch it just in time and scowl harder to compensate.
He watches me for a long beat, then says, quieter, “Your shoulder should be wrapped again.”
“It’s fine.”
“It is swollen.”
“You’re not a healer.”
“No. But I have eyes.”
I busy myself untying the first sack. “Lucky you.”
His shadow stretches over the table. “Pax.”
I keep working.
His voice drops lower. “You do not need to fight me over every task.”
That hits a little too close to something tender and ugly, so naturally I lash out. “I’m not fighting you over every task,” I snap. “Only the ones I can do perfectly well without you hovering.”
The silence that follows is the wrong sort. Not annoyed. Not amused. Hurt.
I close my eyes briefly. Bloody hell.
When I look up, Varek’s expression is unreadable again, but I can feel the distance he’s put into himself. He does that when I strike somewhere real. Draws back, not in body but in spirit, as if he’s trying to honour whatever boundary I’ve thrown up, no matter how jagged.
He puts space between us with deliberate care. It’s measured, precise, like he’s learned exactly how far is safe.
Safe for who?
The thought hits wrong. I watch him for a second too long.
He’s steady again. Controlled. Unreadable. But there’s a faint tension in his shoulders now. Like distance costs him something… or proximity does.
It should make things easier.
It doesn’t.
Because the truth under all my snarling is worse than anger. I don’t want to need anyone. Not him. Not anyone.
Need is a hook. A weak point. A hand around your throat. I learned that long before Terrafeara, long before monsters and bonds and royal cruelty and enslaved Riftborn with dead eyes. Need is how someone gets inside your life and tells you what you’re worth. Need is how you stay when you should run.
Only this bond doesn’t care what I’ve learned. It doesn’t care about my principles or my history or how carefully I’ve rebuilt myself from the wreckage of a man who once apologised for bleeding on his own kitchen floor.
It just keeps pulling.
Towards Varek. Towards heat and safety and fury and that awful, impossible tenderness in his face whenever he thinks I’m not looking.
I swallow and focus on the grain. “We needed this,” I say, because it’s easier than apologising.
After a moment, he answers. “Yes.”
“There’s enough here for two weeks if we stretch it with the roots.”
“Yes.”
“And the wire will be useful.”
He nods once.
I risk a glance at him. “Did you bring in the snare line from the eastern wall?”
“It is done.”
“Any sign of patrols?”
“Not near the canal. Two on the main road at dawn.”
That gets my full attention. “Palace guard?”
“Yes.”
I straighten. “How many?”
“Four in each. Not searching. Moving through.”
Not searching yet, then.
The city has felt coiled these past few weeks.
Queen Serresta’s grip pulling in. More guards on the roads, more fear in the markets, more whispers about disappearing people.
Riftborn vanish. Human Riftborn vanish more often.
Those taken by the Crown don’t come back unless they’re broken enough to serve as warning.
Every time I think about the compounds, about branded wrists and collars and the obedient emptiness in enslaved Riftborn eyes, something in me goes cold. I’ve had enough of men who think ownership is their right. An entire regime built on it makes me want to burn the bloody world down.
We’re not strong enough yet. Not organised enough. Varek’s fight—his rebels—cracked something open years ago, but cracks aren’t collapse. Not yet.