Natalya #2
And he’s standing there, looking like mayhem itself, watching it all happen.
He doesn’t dare to speak. That’s probably good. I don’t want to hear whatever shitty speech he’s prepared. Kiara already fed me enough explanations and softened truths.
None of it did anything to quiet the urge to hate them all.
Out of everything clawing its way out of me right now—longing, rage, betrayal, grief—rage definitely wins.
It surges so violently I all but hover on the edge of doubting this reality again, half-expecting him to dissolve right in front of my eyes.
But I don’t check and I don’t reach for proof anymore.
Instead, I step forward, closing the distance between us, reach up and—
Strike him across the face with everything I have.
His head snaps to the side, curls flying from his forehead in a way that would be downright adorable if I didn’t want to destroy him right now. The sound cracks through the woods, echoing like the forest itself is applauding me.
He doesn’t look surprised. Not even a little. He takes it humbly and reverently.
When his eyes lift back to mine, I’m momentarily disarmed. It’s the type of eyes that make it physically impossible to stay mad at. But I guess leaving me and making me believe he’s dead is more than enough to overpower even this intensely unbearable, smoldering puppy glare.
My senses flicker around quickly, without me realizing it. But everything—his scent, his rapid heartbeat, the warmth pouring out of his eyes—is pointing to painful evidence that he is really standing in front of me, in all his glory, and I’ve just hit him.
My hand burns, not with pain, but with the need to hit him again. More. And worse.
Other parts of my body are burning as well, in ways I absolutely refuse to acknowledge right now.
I can’t do this.
I spin away sharply and start striding deeper into the woods, desperate to put distance between myself and the living proof of how unstable I am.
But I hear the twigs cracking under his weight. He’s following me.
I whirl around and slap him again. This time with every last ounce of fury I’ve been hoarding.
He takes it. His head jerks to the side once more. This one hurts—I can tell by the way his eyes squeeze shut and by the sharp inhale he can’t quite suppress.
“Leave me alone,” I bite out the second he looks back at me, his eyes burning with guilt and something raw and broken lodged there.
“I can’t,” he grits out.
His eyebrows draw together, like he’s holding something back. Like he wants to speak, explain, justify or beg, but nothing comes. Because there are no words that could carry enough redemption for what he did to me by simply not existing.
He was my lifeline. And he cut it.
“You clearly can,” I force out, my throat tightening around the words. “You did it once.”
I don’t even realize it, but my hand flies up on instinct and slaps him again—same cheek, same place, still enough force behind it to make it sting properly. His eyelids fall shut for a split second, his throat working as he swallows it down.
Then he opens his eyes and looks at me like he’s waiting for another. Not even bracing. Just standing there, patient and obedient.
“I didn’t,” he says. No explanation.
His eyes glass over when the words leave his mouth, like this barely a sentence means everything to him.
A broken, wrong laugh slips out of me before I turn and walk away. But he’s right there, on my heels, relentless like a plague absorbing me whole.
I let out a tormented grunt, not slowing down.
“How many times do you want me to slap you to leave me alone?” I squeak out, my voice splintering under the strain.
“Number like that doesn’t exist,” he answers calmly behind me, that cocky cadence slipping through despite everything.
“Selvaggia,” he adds softly, like he’s doing it on purpose. Like he wants to see what it does to me.
I snap around to face him and he stops so late we almost collide. I plant my palms on his chest, trying to shove him away, but all I manage is sending myself stumbling backward because the bastard is solid like a damn horse.
My heel catches on a rock, so I promptly regain my balance, but by then he’s already there, hands closing around both my wrists to steady me.
I shoot him a furious glance and we freeze like that for a moment. His pupils flicker wildly between my eyes, like he’s weighing something, deciding whether to use the proximity to speak or not.
And then he does.
“I need you to know that I never chose to leave you,” he says finally. “I gave you a vow to protect you in this lifetime and whatever comes after.” He tries to keep his voice steady, but it fractures anyway. “I swear… it felt like that’s exactly what I was doing.”
I blink. Over and over.
But it’s not helping. Everything I see, feel and hear is real and true. And however hard I try not to, I believe him.
I can’t forgive him though. I won’t.
So I stay silent and watch him drown in his own desperate search for the right words.
“Look at me,” he breathes out in surrender, his grip on my wrists trembling slightly, like he’s urging me to see deeper even though he’s already all I see.
“Everything about me is you,” he says quietly. “My mind is your playground. My heart is your shelter. My skin is your canvas.”
I stay frozen, only my pupils are darting over the scribbles tattooed on his arms all the way down to his fingertips.
“There’s nowhere in me you don’t reach.”
He swallows, visibly steadying himself, like he’s holding something feral back, before he continues. His words seep into my mind like fog rolling in low and thick and I can’t ignore how his voice and his presence are soothing something in me.
“When I found you in the woods fifteen years ago, I thought you were a tiny forest witch,” he says, a faint trace of amusement threading through the pain. “And I still believe that, because you did something to me.”
His grip on my wrist tightens even more, like he needs me anchored to every syllable.
“You imprinted yourself into me,” he goes on, voice dropping.
“You’re running through my bloodstream. You are threaded through everything I am.
And what I did to you—” He pauses, his brows knitting as if he’s holding back an anger.
“I felt it in my own body every second. By hurting you, I hurt myself more.”
Each word lands, stacking brick by brick inside my chest, building a weight I can’t release.
My gaze flickers over his face. There’s anger there, sharp but contained. Not at me, never at me, but at himself.
I scrape together the last pieces of my will and force them into a sentence.
“You don’t think a couple of romantic words will make up for what you did, right?” I manage, my voice shaking, because part of me is painfully aware that a couple of romantic words might actually do exactly that, when they’re coming from him and I am still—devastatingly—in love with him.
“No,” he jumps in immediately. “I swear I don’t think that.”
Fine.
Okay.
He’s still standing there, holding me inside that warm, chocolate-brown gravity that feels like something between a fever dream and a memory I never survived losing.
I won’t forgive him. I definitely won’t. But I can’t keep torturing myself either.
My eyes betray me first. They slide down to his hands. One of my greatest weaknesses to this day. Those freaking hands. Veins pumping there with anticipation as they hold me.
My rapidly heaving chest gives me away next.
He takes me in with his stare, devouring the way I’m melting right there in front of him, and it burns. Every inch of me burns.
He tilts his head just slightly, like a warning. I part my lips, my eyes pleading, silently giving him permission.
He knows. He absolutely knows what’s happening to me right now.
The restraint snaps.
He shoves me back toward the closest tree trunk, one hand sliding to the back of my head to soften the impact of the bark, the other rising instinctively toward my throat—
And the second that space is breached, my body betrays me.
My eyes squeeze shut and before he even gets close enough to kiss me, a nightmarish grunt rips out of my chest without my consent. The forest disappears and all I can see behind my eyelids is Lucien—depriving me of air, punishing me for saying what I shouldn’t have said.
His grip painfully tightens. He’s choking me.
I gasp helplessly for air and fling my eyes open, only to find him standing five feet away.
His hands are nowhere near my throat. His arms are rigid at his sides, face drained of color, eyes wide and utterly terrified.
“I’m so sorry—” he says, frozen in place.
Fuck. What just happened?
I drag in a sharp breath and instinctively bring my own hand to my throat, fingers pressing there like I need proof of what’s real.
It felt so real.
My gaze drops to the moss beneath my shoes as I try to shove down the sickening disorientation, trying to force the world back into one version instead of two.
“Nat,” he says quietly.
I want this. I want him. I actually need him more than I want him. So why won’t my head let me have it?
“You’re still scared,” he states, not really asking.
“No,” I blurt out automatically, startled by myself. “I don’t think so.”
I don’t want to be.
I’m not a frightened, crazy girl, for fuck’s sake.
I’m not. I’m not. I’m not.
“Okay,” he exhales calmly. “Okay,” he repeats it, nodding once, like something just clicked into place.
He closes the distance again, but only partway. He stops a foot from me, too careful. I know that’s exactly what I need. But I hate it.
“I need you to close your eyes again,” he says.
I exhale in surrender and do as he says. The world goes black. Without seeing him, all I’m left with is the awareness of him. How deep under my skin he already is, without even touching me yet.
“I need you to describe for me what you just felt.”
His voice drips around me as he feels closer to me now, barely inches.