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A responsibility.

Kallúm is beside me, his arm heavy across my waist, his face buried in the back of my neck. His breath is slow and even, his body curled around mine with the possessiveness of a creature guarding something it refuses to lose again.

I lie still, sitting with the sensation.

There's no wall between Penelope and Nara, no seam, no dividing line. It's more like two rivers joining. Penelope's memories are quieter, but still present, more like the personality of a human life has permanently altered, like the way childhood memories are real, but distant.

Nara's memories are louder but properly faded for the place my soul is at. A god cannot live forever, and if they are to transition, their memories of their pantheon need to die as well. I can feel the shape of the life I once lived. A pantheon of gods I served with, whose names I almost recall. Shores I held together with the force of my tides. And Kallúm appearing as my soul was tearing apart at the seams because of the Godless, and he appeared not as a stranger, not as a captor, but as something far more complicated.

I remember the first time I saw him. I was hiding in a cave with Moriganna, feeling him approach before witnessing his sails in the distance. I knew a fact that would complicate everything—the soul on that ship was meant for mine.

It was far too soon, however. My soul was not meant to transition that early, only pressured by the Godless.

And his soul was demonic. The bind between us was not supposed to form for centuries. He was supposed to evolve first. Instead, the Godless came, and my pantheon began to die, and my soul started dissolving like salt in water, and there was no time left for patience.

No matter the chivalry, I know he was more than delighted to force the bind. I admit that without it, I would have ceased to exist entirely.

It’s something I could always feel that he greedily accepted.

I turn over in his arms. His eyes are already open, the gold watching me with a stillness that tells me he's been awake for a while.

"How long have you been staring at me?"

"Long enough to know something has changed." His thumb traces the line of my jaw, gripping it gently so my face can’t move. "You remember?”

"Some of it." I hold his gaze. "Not all. But enough."

He’s hard to read, but I can feel an intensity in our connection. Perhaps even concern about how I will respond to everything, with Penelope as a buffer to our history.

"You forced the bind because my soul was dissolving," I say, introducing the conversation.

His hand stills on my jaw. "Yes."

"The pantheon was dying. And without the mate bond anchoring me to something, I would have been sundered."

"Yes."

My eyes vibrate back and forth as I take him in. “Then why did I leave in the way that I did? I don’t recall what happened.”

His hand slides down my chest, gently grazing over my breast, then slowly around my throat and down the necklace. “We started to disagree about what you were to do with your dying pantheon. I refused to let you leave, and you demanded I free you.” He leans in, breathing me in, his mouth finding the curve of my neck. I can feel a thought, maybe an instinct, telling me that I have to fight him on this.

“And what if I still want to go?”

His eyes flare when he pulls back, and I see the depth of danger that is the Dominus. The gold goes molten. “That will not be an option.”

“You cannot bottle the storm, Kallúm,” I say, his expression thinning to surprise.

“Nara…”

I have told him that many times.

I grab his face and kiss him, and he returns it with a hunger that has been fermenting for decades. Something foreign yet familiar blossoms in my chest, the cord between us thickening as I can tell that he is pleased.

“You didn’t respond to me,” I croon against his mouth.

The demon rips off the bed covers, cooler air washing underneath the cocooned warmth we’d built. My body is already naked, and I smell of him between my thighs—I’ve learned demons love to ensure their mates always smell of them. Kallúm kisses my stomach, his lips and a warm tongue tracing a path downward until he's gripping the inside of my thighs and holding them wide.

My head throws back as his tongue works hungrily against the most sensitive place on my body, the vulnerability of the position only fueling the fire of it. "You belong to me, Nara," he growls into my flesh, the vibration of his voice adding a sensation that makes me arch. “What happened in the past doesn’t matter now.”