Chapter 19 - Quinn
Chapter 19 - Quinn
The first thing I register is warmth. Not the scratchy, stifling kind from dungeon floors or bitter memories, but something softer—thick, steady heat curling around my spine like a weighted blanket fresh from the sun.
My cheek rests against something solid and warm, and the scent that wraps around me is maddeningly familiar. It’s not the stale damp of stone or the sharp, metallic tinge of blood. It’s deeper. Smokier. Like fire and earth and danger wrapped in the kind of masculine heat that makes me want to bury my face in it and forget the world exists.
God, I smell good.
No. Not me.
Him.
My heart stutters. My limbs tighten before my brain even catches up. My lashes flutter open, sluggish and confused, and the first thing I see is the rise and fall of a bare chest beneath my cheek.
Firm, golden skin. Scars, jagged and old. A tattoo I didn’t give him, coiling around his ribs like smoke. And just above that—a mark I did give him, inked with menace into the shape of something primal. Something brutal.
Volkov.
The rumble hits me next. A low, amused sound that vibrates through my ear and straight down the center of my spine.
“Morning, trouble,” Kieran murmurs, voice heavy with sleep and laced in something I don’t want to admit sounds like affection.
I shoot upright with a strangled noise that can only be described as an indignant screech. The blanket slips down to my waist. His shirt clings to my skin, and my legs tangle in his. He doesn’t move, he just lifts a brow, one arm still resting behind his head like this is just another day of me waking up sprawled on top of him like some clingy mate.
“What the actual hell—” I start, then cut myself off as my pulse spikes hard enough to leave me dizzy. I scramble back, nearly falling off the bed before his hand snakes out and catches my waist, holding me steady with infuriating calm.
“I was sleeping,” he says mildly, the edge of his mouth curving. “You were drooling on my chest.”
“I don’t drool—”
He lifts his hand and taps just beneath his collarbone where a faint glisten still catches the light.
“Oh my god.” I slap his shoulder and immediately regret it because it’s solid as stone and annoyingly warm. “Why are you in my bed—wait, no, why am I in yours? And what happened to the chain?”
His grin sharpens. “I took it off.”
“You—what—why? Did you hit your head while I was unconscious? Did a healer get in here and cleanse your soul? Did someone possess you—”
“You were cold,” he interrupts, voice steady, infuriatingly calm. “I wasn’t going to let you freeze on your own side of the bed just because your pride’s louder than your instincts.”
I blink at him, stunned silent for a full beat. Then two.
Then I explode.
“You can’t just decide to cuddle me like I’m your emotional support Omega! That’s not how this works. I wake up, you’re across the room brooding like a villain, maybe threatening someone’s life in your head—not spooning me like we’ve been married for ten years and our biggest fight was over who burned the soup.”
He stretches lazily beneath the sheets, the muscles in his arms flexing in a way that should be illegal, especially when I’m trying to be angry. “Did you burn the soup?” he asks, tone completely devoid of shame.
“I swear to god, I will find a spoon and stab you with it.”
His laugh is low and genuine, and worse, it shakes the mattress. I glare at him, heart still racing, because none of this makes sense. This is the man who chained me in a dungeon, threatened to drag the truth out of me inch by bloody inch. Who nearly shattered the walls of the castle just to keep me from disappearing.
And now he’s smiling. In bed. With me.
“You’re not tied down anymore,” he says after a beat, the amusement fading into something quieter. “You noticed that part, yeah?”
I stare at him. “You think I’d miss that?”
“You didn’t run,” he adds, voice dipping lower.
“I just woke up—”
“Still,” he murmurs. “You could’ve shoved me off. Screamed. Bit me.”
“I still might.”
He grins. “I’d rather you use your mouth for other things.”
My jaw drops. “Kieran!”
“What? I meant talking. You’re always yelling at me.”
“You did not mean talking—”
He laughs again, but his gaze doesn’t leave mine. And there’s something beneath that humor, something steadier. Watching me. Measuring my reaction not just to his presence, but to the chain being gone. To this bed. To him.
And that’s when it hits me. I’m not cold. Not tense. Not aching from another night of stone floors and restraints.
“You’re still a manipulative bastard,” I say flatly, needing to feel something sharp again. “You don’t get a medal for being the lesser version of the monster you’ve always been.”
He inclines his head like I just paid him a compliment. “And yet you curled into me like I was your salvation.”
My cheeks flush. “I was asleep.”
He moves again, closer now, resting his head against his arm and watching me like he’s memorizing the shape of my breath. “No, Quinn. You were safe.”
The silence that follows crackles. I hate it, because he means it.
“I’m not yours,” I whisper.
He doesn’t flinch. “You are.”
“I’m not your mate. I didn’t choose you.”
“Maybe not,” he says, voice soft but sure. “But the bond did. And you haven’t rejected it. Not really.”
My heart twists. I tried. I almost did.
I shift slightly, staring at the faint mark on his chest again. A scar I never wrote. A wound I never gave him. And I realize, in the stillness, in the aftermath of the chaos he and I keep breeding between us, that this man is more than what I built.
More than the Alpha of Volkov land. More than the monster I etched in ink and violence. He’s mine now in a way that terrifies me more than any chain ever could.
And maybe I’m his too.
God help me.