Page 28 of Shadowed Bond

“We didn’t win because we were stronger than him,” he says quietly. “We won because we were too stubborn to kneel. There’s a difference.”

The words settle inside me with an ache I do not expect. He turns his head slightly, meeting my eyes across the small space between our beds.

“And when the mark broke,” he continues, his voice dropping even lower, “it didn’t sound like victory. It felt like something that was never meant to break realising it could.”

A shiver runs through me. Not from cold but from the weight of those words.

I think of what he said earlier in the car. About mates being weaknesses. About attachments making men vulnerable. About running from the very thing most people spend their lives praying to find.

I understand it a little more now. I don’t agree, but I understand it.

“Were you afraid?”

His eyes harden immediately. “I wasn’t.”

I hold his gaze. “Liar.”

His brows draw together. I do not look away.

“Fear is not the same as cowardice,” I say, my voice quiet but steady. “A coward runs before the fight begins. You stood there with your brothers while a god tried to burn you from existence, and you still chose to rise. That is not the absence of fear, Ares. That is courage. And I’ll regret it tomorrow, but your name suits you more than I’d like to admit.”

He says nothing, but something in his face changes.

I should stop. But I don’t.

“And perhaps that is what truly scares you,” I continue, my heart beating a little too hard now. “Not women. Not mates. Not love. But the fact that you already know what devotion can make you do, and you are terrified that one day there will be someone you would burn the world for without hesitating.”

The room goes utterly still.

Ares turns fully onto his side, then facing me properly across the narrow gap between our beds, his muscular arm bent beneath his head. His eyes catch the silver light from the window, sharp and guarded, but no longer distant.

Neither of us moves, and neither of us looks away, but neither of us utters another word.

And in the dark, with rain against the window and the space between us far too small, we lie there facing one another, staring into each other’s eyes as if one of us might finally say the thing neither of us is ready to voice.

Startled Awake

Ares

Iawake to a startled cry, and instantly my aura surges forward, and I’m off the bed, the duvet slipping to the ground, and in seconds power is swirling around my hands, my wolf surging to the forefront of my mind, ready to rip apart whatever the fuck has got into the room.

“What?” I snarl.

Charlotte is sitting upright in the other bed, one hand gripping the covers against her chest, her hair – fucking hell, it’s as big as someone from the sixties or some shit – and her grey eyes are fixed on me.

I scan the room; nothing is out of place, the door is shut, so is the window, and there’s no sign of any disturbance. No monster, no Indomitable idiot, no danger, just Charlotte Arden staring at me like I’ve committed some crime.

“What?” I repeat, frowning.

Her gaze drops to my chest, then snaps back up to my face, accusation sharp in her eyes.

“Where is your shirt?” she demands.

I blink, then look down at myself.

Oh. Right.

I shrug. “Somewhere here.” I look around the room, spotting it on the floor in the small gap between the two beds.