Teddy pretends to keep watching out the window, but he stills unnaturally.
“I know,” he croaks. The admission sounds like it is dragged unwillingly from his throat.
Seren pulls the leather vest over her tunic. “I am not some battle you can strategize your way out of, Teddy. And choosing me does not erase the past.” Then, softer, “I am not trying to replace her.”
Her words hang in the air, part-hurt, part-resolve.
Anguish takes root in his expression. His fists clench like they can anchor him.
She moves to him, gripping his forearm, forcing him to turn to her. To look at her. No—toseeher.
“I will not be the mistake you make when you are weak, Therion Ashborne.” The words sound like a reprimand. But underneath the force of them, lies a tender, broken truth.
“I am the truth you choose when you are strong.”
She draws in a fortifying breath.
“I’m worth being brave for. I’m worth the risk of your own unraveling.”
Teddy pulls her in, cradling her to his chest, and threading his hand through the curls of her hair. His lips meet the top of her head, reverent, and undeniable.
Hope fills her chest?—
“I need time,” he whispers, and hope shatters like a dropped glass. Evaporates in a heartbeat.
Seren pulls away. Not cruelly.Definitively.
“Then I ask that you do not touch me while you ask me to wait. Do not give me crumbs when what I deserve is a meal,” she snaps, her voice harder now.
Teddy flinches. A rare falter from the General of War. But his eyes narrow into an unavoidable storm—and Seren is trapped there, right in the eye of it
“Hear me when I say this, Seren,” he growls, voice a low, primal claim, “you deserve a fucking feast.”
The words hit her like a hand wrapping around her throat. Possessive. Devastating. Almost enough to make her surrender. A muscle feathers in his set jaw, his body a coiled spring, every muscle pulled taut, as if not moving to her is a battle of its own.
Holy gods.
Her want for him wars with the rejection still stirring in her chest—a crucible of opposing forces. Her voice drops into a whisper. “Then why won’t you choose me?”
The words come out hurt and hollow.
Teddy’s face twists, wrecked and tormented. “It is not that I won’t chooseyou,Seren. It is that I need to find the courage to choosemyself. To let myself be happy. Because right now, I feel like the Stars will take you from me for failing to protect my first love.” His voice is a tortured croak. A self-deprecating slur.
But Seren’s attention snags on one thing:my first love.
Not present tense. Not apology. Just truth.
Is she his second? Does Teddy love her?
And despite herself—the craving to fall into him, to give him time, to soften in the face of his pain—she lifts her chin, squares her shoulders, and says, “I’m getting hungry, Teddy. A feast is exactly what I need.”
She doesn’t wait for his response, she simply straps a small dagger to her thigh holster, spins for the door, and doesn’t try to stop the smile that breaks free on her face.
Her blood is already humming for motion.
The sun isn’ttentative anymore—it beats down on the army, sharp and fierce, as they organize themselves into lines under Teddy’s instruction.
His voice booms into the clearing, “If you cannot organize yourselves in training, how in the Stars do you expect to remain a strong unit in battle?”
