“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.
