My eyes roll back as it tears through me, dragging me under with it, and I come hard—untouched, wrecked, completely undone by him.
His grip in my dreads flexes, grounding, anchoring, as I shudder through it. “Enough,” he says, voice rough, fraying at the edges.
Not a command.
A plea.
That’s what finally makes me pull back.
Slowly.
I release him, breath uneven, lips tingling from the stretch, from the pressure, from the sheer intensity of it. My head spins,my body still riding the aftershocks, every nerve lit up and slow to settle.
Varek’s chest rises beneath me, his gaze locked on mine—bright, blown, stripped of that usual careful control.
For a moment, neither of us moves.
It doesn’t matter that I’m a mess, that I’m covered in Varek’s cum, that I look completely wrecked. I’m exactly where I want to be. With him.
The bond hums between us, still warm, still alive, no longer spiking but steady, full—like it’s settled deeper after everything we just shared.
I swallow, my voice rough when I find it. “Fuck, baby…” A breath of a laugh slips out, unsteady but real. “Holy shit.” I shake my head slightly, still trying to come back to myself. “I love you.”
His hand is still tangled in my dreads, still holding on, not firm now—just there. Comforting. Certain.
Unsurprisingly, we don’t leave the bed straight away even though we both know we should.
Reality is already waiting for us outside those doors, sitting heavy over the settlement, the weight of what comes next pressing in from every direction. Varek doesn’t get the luxury of ignoring that for long—not when people are already looking to him to lead, to decide, to hold everything together after what we lost yesterday. Still, when we finally part, it’s slow and reluctant, like neither of us is quite ready to let go of the quiet we carved out for ourselves.
His hand lingers at the back of my neck as I shift away, fingers brushing through the shorter, thinner dreads there in a way that feels absent-minded but is anything but. I lean into it without thinking, pressing one last kiss to his mouth before I straighten, forcing myself to take that step back even though every instinct in me argues against it.
“Go,” I say quietly, because I know he has to.
His gaze searches mine for a moment, like he’s checking that I actually mean it, that I’m not about to pull him back into this space where everything feels steady and contained. “I will return,” he says.
“Yeah,” I reply, a faint smile tugging at my mouth. “You’d better.”
That earns me the smallest curve of his lips before he pulls away properly, rising to his full height in one smooth movement that still feels unfairly graceful for someone built like him. I stay where I am for a second longer, watching the shift settle over him as he steps back into his role, cleans and dresses, the quiet intimacy of the moment folding away without disappearing entirely.
He pauses at the entrance, glancing back once more, and I hold his gaze, steady and certain, before he finally turns and leaves.
The quiet that follows doesn’t feel empty. Just… separate.
I sit for a few seconds longer, letting it settle, then drag a hand over my face and push myself up, bracing for the shift back into everything else.
The settlement feelsdifferent in daylight, or maybe I do.
There’s movement everywhere—people reinforcing structures, repairing damage, checking weapons, tending to wounds that couldn’t wait—but there’s a tension under it all now, like everyone’s braced for the next hit even if no one’s saying it out loud. The Queen didn’t send that many soldiers just to stop. This was a message. A test. Maybe even a distraction.
Which means something else is coming.
I move through the outer lanes, scanning without thinking, that edge of awareness settling into place like it’s always been there. I’m looking for Sonny. I want to check on Jack, too, but I hesitate at the thought of just walking up to him. He had to send Jamie away. Had to stand there and let him go through that rift knowing he couldn’t follow. That kind of thing isn’t something you interrupt unless you’re sure you won’t make it worse, and I’m not sure of anything right now.
Sonny, though—Sonny will either be distracting him or need distracting himself.
Either way, I can work with that.
I cut down one of the quieter side paths near the outer edge of the settlement, the sounds of movement fading slightly as the trees close in around the boundary, and that’s when I see him.
