Chapter 18 - Kieran

Chapter 18 - Kieran
The room is quiet, except for the faint, steady rhythm of her breathing—uneven at first, then softening as sleep drags her deeper into stillness. 

I sit across from her, legs spread wide, elbows resting on my knees, hands loose in front of me, but my shoulders are tight as iron. No matter how long I stare at her, it doesn’t let up. The ache. The fire. That thing twisting in my chest like it wants to claw its way out and curl against her spine just to stay close.

Quinn. My mate... the person who made me. Literally. How she ended up in her own story is something I haven't figured out yet. There's no one I can trust with this, not even my brothers.

Even now, unconscious and wrapped in my scent, she’s defiant. Her brow furrows every so often, lips twitching like she’s still arguing in her dreams. Maybe she is. Maybe she’s rewriting the world again behind closed lids and clever smirks. Maybe she’s already figured out a new way to destroy me.

God, I hope not. Because I don’t know that I’d stop her.

I lean back a little, exhaling through my nose, trying to ignore how everything inside me feels on edge and alert. Not the kind of awareness that comes with danger, but the kind that comes with something too delicate to touch but impossible to ignore.

She shifts in the sheets, one arm dragging across her chest, the other still caught gently in the chain that links her wrist to the headboard. I left it loose. More of a reminder than a cage. She could hurt me in a thousand ways, but I needed her to know she still couldn’t leave.

Not yet.

I rise slowly from the chair and cross the room without making a sound. Centuries of blood in my bones and I still move like a ghost when I need to. The floor doesn’t creak. The stone doesn’t whisper. Only the scent of her wraps around me tighter the closer I get—warm, sweet, maddening. Mine.

She stirs again when I kneel beside the bed, her lashes fluttering. I watch her face, those fine lines of exhaustion creasing the corners of her mouth. She’s paler than I like. Thinner. The rejection vow drained her more than she’ll admit, and though she’s survived worse—hell, she’s written worse—this… this nearly killed us both.

I don’t touch her. Not yet. Not until I’ve forced my breath to even out. Not until I’ve let the rage pass through me, not into me. She baited me. Played me. Nearly severed the bond I would raze kingdoms to keep. 

And still I sit here, gaze locked on her sleeping form, and feel none of the fury I should. Just the weight of what it would’ve meant if I hadn’t found her in time.

I settle beside her slowly, sliding under the covers with deliberate care. Her body tenses the moment she feels the dip of the mattress. Not fear. Just instinct.

Good girl.

I move behind her, careful not to press too close. She’s still warm from the bath I gave her earlier, her hair damp at the ends, curling slightly where it brushes the pillow. I could let her have distance. Could keep the wall of space between us like I promised.

But I don’t.

Instead, I ease forward, one arm sliding beneath the pillow her head rests on, the other curling around her waist—not to pin, just to feel. To anchor myself to the heat of her skin beneath my shirt. She exhales, slow and shaky, but she doesn’t pull away.

Progress.

Her body fits too well against mine. Like she was drawn from the same war I crawled out of, carved from the same storm. She doesn’t soften in sleep—she stays coiled, tense. A blade instead of a bloom. And gods, I want her exactly like this. Fire in her throat and venom in her smile.

I bury my nose in the curve of her neck and breathe her in, letting the scent settle into me like it’s home. Her pulse skips beneath my mouth when I press a kiss there—light, fleeting, more vow than touch.

She murmurs something in her sleep. My name. Or a curse. Maybe both.

I smile against her skin.

“You’re safe,” I murmur quietly, not expecting her to hear. “Even if you don’t believe it yet. Even if you’d rather claw your way out of your own skin than admit this bond holds more than power.”

She doesn’t move, but my words sink in, if only into me.

“I don’t want your fear, Quinn,” I continue, my voice nothing more than a breath. “I want your truth. I want the woman who broke the rules of her own damn story just to make a man like me fall.”

I close my eyes, jaw clenched against everything I won’t say out loud. Like how I’ve read the way she wrote me. She doesn’t realize how much of herself she’s already given to me in those scribbled lines and half-formed prayers. 

She wrote my rage. My violence. My hate. But she never accounted for what would happen if I turned those same weapons inward—if I loved her with the same brutality she wrote into my bones.

And I do, even if it ruins us both.

My fingers flex against her stomach, dragging gently over the thin fabric as I press another kiss to the space just behind her ear. She shivers, even in sleep her body knows me, even if her mind still calls me monster. That’s fine. I can be both. 

I curl closer, chest flush with her spine now, my hand moving up to rest over her heartbeat.

It’s steady; real. And gods, it’s mine.

“Sleep, omega,” I murmur into her skin. “Dream of your freedom. Of running, of escaping, of slaying the beast at the gates. Dream of anything you want. Because when you wake, I’ll still be here. I’ll always be here.”

Her breathing deepens, a soft exhale warming the space between us. I wait, silent, for the bond to ease again. For that trembling line between us to settle into something almost peaceful.

I don’t close my eyes. I just lie there in the quiet ruin of my own restraint, with the only woman who’s ever made me want to believe in fate again.

If she ever tells me the truth, if she ever opens her mouth and says the thing I already know, the thing I’ve been pretending not to feel since the second I scented her on my land—

I don’t know if I’ll thank her for it, or fall to my knees. But I do know one thing, carved in the marrow of who I am:

I will never let her go.