“I’m going to take her home,” he added, already stepping back.
Voices rose around them—questions, concern, someone calling after him—but it all blurred into the background.
She followed.
That was all that mattered.
Dragonfly didn’t speak, but she let him lead—through bramble-thick shortcuts, over root-tangled slopes, wherever his body told him to go. When she stumbled over a fallen log, he caught her without thinking, wrapping an arm around her waist, steadying her before she could fall. She didn’t pull away. That alone unraveled the knot in his chest.
Eventually, his steps slowed. The burning in his limbs began to ease. Their desperate retreat softened—a slow drift through the woods, like they were walking back into quiet and calm.
Then she stopped.
Collin turned just in time to see her press a hand to a tree, as if it were the only thing holding her upright. Then, without a word, she sank to the ground. Her arms wrapped tight around her legs. Her forehead dropped to her knees.
He stood there, breath shallow, mesmerized by the light catching in the strands of her hair as it spilled over her shoulders in wind-blown waves. She looked as if the forest had exhaled and set her down gently.
Collin sat beside her, the earth still unsteady beneath him. His thoughts spun too fast to hold—images flashing and overlapping: the panther’s eyes, the snap of the branch, the blur of blue as the arrow flew. He could still smell the animal’s musk clinging to his skin. It turned his stomach.
And yet—beneath it, a gentler memory.
A light floral scent hovered at the edge of his awareness, teasing his thoughts. He closed his eyes and breathed, slow anddeep. The fragrance wound its way through his chest, calming the frantic rhythm of his heart.
She shifted beside him, and the memory clicked into place. He’d smelled it when he held her—his face pressed to her hair, his arms locked around her back. That same soft sweetness lingered now, curling around him like a whispered secret.
He opened his eyes.
She no longer hid her face, but stared blankly into a low, thorny shrub. Her profile was still, distant.
Longing tugged at him—sudden and sharp. He wanted to touch her, to pull her close, feel the shape of her shoulder against his, to rest his mouth at the curve of her neck and breathe her in again. The thought sent a shiver through him, light and electric.
Then his gaze dropped to the blood smeared across the hem of his shirt. Sticky, half-dried. The spell broke.
He exhaled and reached for her bow instead—Glacies. His thumb brushed the smooth blue wood, its surface like the sheen of a frozen lake. Beautiful. Dangerous.
Just like her.
“Are you injured?” she asked quietly.
Collin blinked. “Umm... I’m not sure...”
“May I have a look?”
Collin turned his back to her. He removed his waistcoat, and she pulled up the back of his shirt. For some moments, she carefully studied his injuries.
He didn’t move.
Her fingers brushed the back of his neck—light, careful—and a ripple shot through him, pure and thrilling. The touch was so gentle it almost hurt.
He wanted more. Not in a desperate way, but in that aching, bone-deep way that made him feel both weightless and impossibly alive.
Then she leaned in, close enough that her breath traced across his skin—warm, soft, maddening.
His heart kicked into his throat, stomach tightening.
For a moment, the world narrowed to that single point of contact, and everything else blurred. Her nearness painted flashes behind his vision: closeness, skin, the terrible hunger he’d kept hidden blooming suddenly into light. His pulse stuttered.
He closed his eyes.
