Still—watching Menon build something he loved had become one of my favorite things in the world.
He came alive while working.
Focused.
Brilliant.
Intense.
Beautiful.
Gods.
Especially beautiful.
The soft blue glow of celestial projections against his skin while he worked late nights in rolled-up sleeves should have been illegal.
I’d become embarrassingly obsessed with watching his forearms flex.
Very embarrassing.
Not embarrassing enough to stop, though.
Summer classes had been exhausting but worth it. I was finally catching up academically after years of struggling to align properly with my magic.
Turns out being a Lunar Witch meant functioning almost exclusively at night.
Who knew?
Well.
Probably Professor Kenna.
That woman knew everything.
Menon had only one semester remaining before returning to Asgard to assume his position, but instead of panicking about it, he simply opened a Runevald branch for Celestial Mapping directly in Asgarheim and worked it out with his family that he would remain until my studies were finished.
Which meant more time together.
More nights tangled in our bed beneath moonlit windows.
More studying together.
More stolen kisses in library stacks.
More existing beside each other in ways that made loneliness feel impossible now.
We’d moved from the graduate dormitories into the mated housing district just beyond Institute grounds—a row of old gothic homes inhabited mostly by supernatural couples incapable of keeping their hands off each other.
Honestly?
Fair.
Matebonds were intense.
Like frighteningly intense.
There were days I physically ached if Menon spent too long away from me.
