“I don’t belong to a bond.”
“No.”
“I don’t belong to you.”
“No.”
Her forehead presses more firmly against mine.“But I want to know what it feels like to choose you.”
The beast goes silent, and the man nearly breaks.I close my eyes.“Then choose one thing,” I whisper.“Only one.”
Her breath warms my mouth.It’s not a kiss.But it almost is, and that almost destroys me.
“This,” she says, and her hand tightens gently on my jaw.
I don’t move.I barely breathe.We stay that way until the roof door opens.
Ari’s voice drifts out.“I am not looking.I am only announcing that Akasha has food, and Krishka has made something dangerous with candle wax.”
Briana pulls back, cheeks flushed, and I mourn the loss like a wound.
Ari peeks through two fingers.“Oh.This is tender.Gross.I’ll leave.”
“Stay gone,” I growl.
She grins and disappears, and Briana looks down at me.Something has changed in her face.Not healed.Not fixed.But open, just a crack.Enough for air.Enough for truth.
“I’m still angry,” she says, and I nod.“But I’m less scared.”
I nod again because my throat doesn’t work.She steps back, and this time the distance doesn’t feel like rejection.It feels like a promise deferred.
At the roof door, she pauses.“Knox?”
“Yes?”
“Tomorrow, when I wear that fake collar, you remind me what you said.”
“Which part?”
Her eyes hold mine.“That I’m not yours.”
The beast flinches, but I don’t.“You are yours,” I say.
She nods.“And if I choose to stand beside you?”
I rise slowly.“Then I will be there.”
Her mouth curves, small and brave.“Good.”
She goes inside, but I remain on the roof for a minute, maybe ten, staring at the door she closed behind her.The mate bond burns beneath my skin, hungry and aching and no longer hidden.She knows, and she has not run.She has not chosen me either, not yet, but she touched my face.She rested her forehead against mine.She asked me to remind her that she belongs to herself.
For tonight, that’s more than enough.For tonight, I let the beast settle around the truth.Briana is my mate.And the first act of loving her is not claiming.It is waiting.
