Chapter 32 Chapter 32 – The Line I Can't Cross

Chapter 32 Chapter 32 – The Line I Can't Cross

Damon Reed POV
The bond is screaming with her anger when I finally push myself out of the chair.
My ribs burn like fire under the fresh bandage, but the real pain is deeper—the echo of her words still ringing in my skull. If you ever lie to me like that again, I walk. I should have apologized. I should have said something soft, something that would have kept her in the room, kept her close where I could see her breathing. Instead I doubled down, because softness gets wolves killed. I learned that early. I learned it the hard way.
I remember the months after she rejected me—lying in the dirt, bond-tear ripping through every nerve, vision blurring as Elena dragged me back from death's edge. I swore then: never again would I let anyone close enough to hold that kind of power over me. Never again would I stand open-handed while someone walked away with the part of me I couldn't replace.
And yet here I am, bleeding for her, lying for her, loving her in ways that terrify me more than any claw or relic or ancient power hunting her bloodline.
I find her in the strategy room, standing before the map of glow sites, arms crossed, back rigid. The room is lit only by low torches; shadows carve her face into something sharp and beautiful and furious. Tension is nuclear. She doesn't turn when I enter.
"You shouldn't be up," she says without looking at me.
"You shouldn't be alone," I answer.
I step closer. The bond pulls like a chain between us, taut and insistent, registering every flicker of her fury and the unwilling tenderness she hates herself for feeling underneath it. I try to explain—not apologize, because the choice was right even if the execution was wrong. That distinction matters to me. It probably shouldn't.
"The dying wolf said the daughter is marked," I tell her. "The disc isn't pack-made. Whatever is hunting the relic is hunting your blood specifically, Kira. I left you behind because I cannot watch you walk into that. I am not built to watch that and survive it."
She turns then, eyes blazing. "You don't get to decide my risks."
I close the distance without thinking. My hand finds the side of her neck, thumb brushing her pulse—still fast, still furious, still achingly alive. She doesn't pull away. I lean in, lips grazing the sensitive spot below her ear, breathing her in—rain and cedar and fury. My other hand slides to her waist, pulling her against me despite the sharp protest of my ribs. She gasps, fingers digging into my shoulders hard enough to bruise.
For a moment the world narrows to heat and need and the roar of the bond between us.
I kiss her neck, slow and possessive, hands roaming beneath the hem of her shirt, desperate to anchor her, to remind both of us that we are still here, still breathing, still on the same side of whatever war is gathering at our borders. She responds—hips pressing forward, nails raking up my back, mouth finding mine in a kiss that tastes like war and want and six months of circling each other without landing.
We are seconds from crossing the line. Bodies straining, bond roaring, every rational thought dissolving—
Then she stops.
Hands flat on my chest. She pushes me back.
"Not while you're still treating me like a thing to protect instead of a partner."
The words hit harder than any claw.
I step back. The air between us crackles with everything that didn't happen. I look at her—flushed, breathing hard, furious with herself for wanting it as much as I did—and I have nothing to say that won't make it worse.
I storm out without another word, slamming the door so hard a ward rune cracks and sparks in the frame. The corridor blurs with rage and shame in equal measure. I walk the compound perimeter until the pain in my side dulls to a throb, until the bond quiets from a roar to a low hum of her residual anger, until I can feel my own thoughts again beneath the noise.
Thirty minutes. Maybe more.
I return calmer, colder, hating myself in the specific way that only she can make me.
She's in our quarters now, sitting on the edge of the bed in the dark, Lila's journal open on her lap. Moonlight spills across the pages, across her hands, across the tension still carved into the line of her shoulders. She looks up when I enter. Her voice is quiet, and quietly devastating.
"She wrote about me. Months ago. Before we even married."
The words land like a blade slipped between ribs—precise, deep, cold.
I close the door softly behind me. The bond pulls tighter—her fear underneath the anger now, something raw and newly exposed, the look of a person who has just discovered that the ground they were standing on was never as solid as they believed.
I cross the room and sit beside her. Close enough to feel her heat, far enough that she can bolt if she needs to. She doesn't look at me.
"What does it say?" I ask.
She closes the journal with deliberate slowness, fingers pressing flat against the cover as though she could push the words back inside and unsee them.
"Enough to make me question every conversation we ever had."
The silence stretches between us, heavy and particular. I want to reach for her. I don't.
"We'll find out what she was doing," I say. "Together."
She finally meets my eyes. "Together," she echoes.
The word tastes bitter on both our tongues. I can feel that too—the way it sits wrong, the way it costs her something to say it after everything tonight. But the bond doesn't lie. Beneath the anger, beneath the hurt, beneath the wreckage of the last few hours—something still burns. Stubborn and unasked-for and entirely beyond either of our control.
It always has been.