“Good.” He leans in slightly, his voice dropping to a murmur. “Because you may paint your pretty pictures and play your little games, but at the end of the day…” His gaze darkens, the air around us growing colder still. “You belong to me.”
“I belong to no one.” The words escape my lips before I can stop them, sharper than I intended.
His eyes narrow, cutting into me like shards of ice.
“Such defiance,” he taunts. “But tell me—where does all that fire go when you’re with Jake?”
The question blindsides me, and I blink up at him, confusion briefly breaking my resolve. “Jake?”
“Yes. Jake,” he says, the growing intensity in his gaze making me take a step back. “The way he hovers around you like a lost puppy is almost endearing—if it wasn’t so pathetic.”
My jaw tightens. Because Aerix isn’t just curious.
He’sjealous.
The realization both shocks and unnerves me.
“There’s nothing between me and Jake,” I say, since the truth is easy enough to admit. “He reminded me of someone I knew back home. But the more I get to know him, the more I realize he’s not the same.”
“And Matt?” he asks. “Surely you’ve sought comfort in someone familiar?”
My stomach twists painfully at the reminder of how sick Matt looked in his room earlier. “Matt isn’t himself anymore,” I say, and again, it’s easy to be honest. “He’s obsessed with the queen. It’s like she’s drained everything out of him. He doesn’t even look at me, let alone talk to me. He’s… dying.”
At the final word, emotions I’ve been trying to keep inside crash over me like a tidal wave.
And then, the tears come. Hot and uncontrollable, they blur my vision as weeks of fear, frustration, and despair flood me all at once.
I try to hold them back—to stuff them down like I always do—but it’s no use.
My attempt at vulnerability has morphed into far more than I intended.
Aerix steps closer, and I brace myself for him to mock me, or to make some sort of snide comment about how it’s unbecoming of his pets to cry.
Instead, he reaches forward, his hand brushing my shoulder.
I don’t resist. Instead, I let his arms encircle me, solid and cold, like I’m being pulled into the eye of a storm.
“It’s all right,” he murmurs, softly enough to send another wave of tears coursing down my cheeks. “Let it out.”
I don’t know how long I stand there, crying into his chest while his fingers trace gentle circles on my back. But eventually, the storm inside me quiets, and I pull away—mortified.
I just broke down in the arms of a prince of the Night Court. In the arms of someone I shouldhate.
“I’m sorry,” I say, trying to compose myself as I wipe at my eyes. “I shouldn’t have?—”
“You have nothing to apologize for.” His voice is steady, and when I meet his gaze, there’s no judgment there. “Even the strongest people need to break sometimes.”
My heart pounds as his fingers brush my cheek, wiping away a stray tear.
Then, something snaps.
All of the tension between us—the first night when we shared that bed in the bunker, the easy banter when we had breakfast the next day, the moment when he stopped the king from claiming me in the throne room, and all those times when he sank his fangs into my skin, pulling my life force from me and into him… it comes crashing down in a moment of need and desire.
And then his lips are on mine—cool but firm, commanding yet gentle—and I don’t move away.
