She’s right.
“You need to stop tormenting me,” I mutter.
“Then stop acting like you’re cursed,” she replies. “You’re not cursed, Kaelion—you’re complicated. You’vealwaysbeen complicated.”
I glance down, running my thumb along the edge of the desk. “It isn’t just the lab accident. It’s the dynamic. I’m her supervisor. And I…”
I’ve had these thoughts before and never acknowledged them. Never accepted them. Never admitted that our minds already see each other, know each other, that there’s a deep, mutual admiration I cannot deny.
“You look like you’re having deep thoughts and don’t want to say them out loud,” she says.
I huff. “Don’t you have a Skoll to be riding right now?”
Shahar lets out a loud laugh, and I even hear a chuckle from Wulfric in the background.
“She does!” Wulfric shouts.
Shahar shakes her head. “Good night, Kaelion. Think about what I said.”
“Good night, Shahar—and you too, Wulfric.”
The screen goes dark. Silence settles in the room.
I sit there for a moment, staring at my reflection in the blank monitor. My tendrils shift slowly, restlessly, the way they do when I’m agitated or overly stimulated. I breathe out through my nose.
Think about what she said.
I already am. That’s the problem.
Lyn Walker is under my skin in a way no one else has been in years—decades, maybe. And it isn’t just the aftermath of the lab accident. I know it. I think I’ve known it for a long time. I don’t look at her and see a student. I see a woman who fascinates me. A woman who challenges me.
I want her.
And that’s what terrifies me most.
Because wanting her is easy. It’s the next part that’s difficult.
I stand from the desk, stretch out my shoulders, and glance toward Solvi’s door one more time. She’s probably still sketching, lost in her comic world. I won’t bother her. Not tonight.
Instead, I walk to the kitchen and fill a water bulb, trying to force my thoughts back into order. Back into neat, safe categories where nothing risks implosion.
Lyn is my subordinate. That is the line.
She is also a brilliant mind. That is the truth.
She is reacting to me in ways that are…biologically conditioned. That is the problem.
But the desire I feel?
That’s mine.Entirelymine. And it existed before the accident.
I close my eyes, letting the water cool the back of my throat, hoping it’ll calm me.
It doesn’t.
Because I can still hear the soft, strangled sound she made when I flicked her shoulder. I can still see the flutter of her eyelashes, the way she clenched her thighs together under the table. I can still feel the heat of her body beside mine. I can still remember the way she admitted—reluctantly, beautifully—that it wasn’t just about touch.
That it wasme. Only me.
