The fire in the common room burned low, throwing shadows against the stone. Ardorion lingered with Aster near the hearth, their voices hushed enough to pretend privacy. I leaned forward in my seat, eyes on Orivian, letting my earrings chime as I hissed the words only he was meant to hear.
“Stop following me around like a lost puppy. I do not intend to adopt you.”
His smirk came quick, sharp as the gleam in his green eyes. “A puppy would beg for scraps. That isn’t what this is. You think it’s something we can walk away from when it is written in our blood?”
I didn’t intend to walk away. But how would I escape his level of hell if he was always on my heels? I needed to talk to Elio. Without my own wings, I needed a way to leave the island, before Orivian or anyone else tried to talk me out of it.
I straightened, stiff in my armor, unwilling to let the quiver inside me show. “Not here.”
My gaze flicked toward Ardorion and Aster, still too close, still watching even if they pretended not to.
Orivian leaned nearer, mouth angling toward my ear. “We could always go to your room if you want privacy.”
My pulse jumped, a sensation shooting straight to my core.
His suggestion threaded with a heat I didn’t want, but it was more a dare more than an offer.
I narrowed my eyes and cut the single word between us as I stood. “Out.”
His grin widened as though I had given him what he wanted. He pushed past me into the corridor, claiming the lead before I could. I clenched my jaw but followed, unwilling to trail behind yet forced into it. He didn’t stop just outside the quad. Instead, he led us through a narrow staircase and into a quiet back hall where torchlight burned low and the air carried the faint chill of disuse. Few students ever wandered this far at night.
He stopped in the hallway, turned, and caught me with his gaze.
“Perfect,” he murmured. “Almost like the last time.”
The memory struck like a flash. The rough stone of the Academy’s outer wall beneath my palms, the stretch of dusk around us, his wings curving to shield us even as the risk of discovery spurred fire through my veins. I shoved the memory down before it could root.
“You like being caught,” I said. “That’s what this is.”
“Interesting how your mind went there and not somewhere else. Are you thinking about kissing me again?” His smile was feline. “If I remember correctly, you’re the one who took us outside where you kissed me.”
He stepped closer until my back pressed into the wall. “It doesn’t matter to me where we are. I like being with you.”
I should have pushed him away.
I didn’t.
He didn’t wait for me to change my mind. His thigh slid between mine, pressing upward with deliberate pressure, and I barely bit back a moan. His mouth found my neck, lips dragging against skin, tongue teasing, teeth grazing. I pressed my lips tight together to hold back my moan, my armor clinking as I arched involuntarily.
Heat flushed through me, traitorous, answering the rhythm of his mouth as he sucked at the curve where neck met shoulder.
I shouldn’t be doing this! Giving in to him meant accepting my fate, that of both the bond and the one he saw for me, for us.
My hand came up to shove him back, but I struggled against the instinct to run. Before I could win the war on my own desire, my hand tangled in his hair, holding him there where his lips left a trail of fire on my skin.
“You’re moaning,” he whispered against my throat. “You want this as much as I do.”
The words fanned desire until it burned at the edges of my control. Something else pressed at the forefront of my mind, insistent, demanding. This thing I had just thought about, but his thigh pressed harder, the pressure nearly ripping an orgasm through me, and whatever thought I had now drowned under the tide of sensation.
He pulled back enough to let his eyes travel down my armor. His grin curved wicked. “Your armor makes it hard to reach what I want most. Shall I strip it away? I could wrap my wings around you again, shield you from every prying eye as I lay you bare before me.”
“The armor is here for protection,” I said. “From you.”
He chuckled, low and pleased. “Why would you need protection from me?”
I gave him a look sharp enough to cut through his grin.
His laughter faded into a hum of thought, and his voice softened as his gaze met mine with an earnest look. “Then tell me what this is, Garnexis. Tell me what we are doing.”
My breath caught at the sudden seriousness. “I thought I was clear with what I was doing, and what we were not doing.”
“Yet here you are, moaning for my kisses.” His statement was soft, and not a jest this time.
I didn’t know what to say to that. I could only blame it all on the fated bond.
He searched my face, something almost vulnerable threading under the bravado. “How do I salvage this? Tell me what I can do so you’ll stay in my life.”
The ache his words nearly undid me. I hardened myself against it, pulling the steel of my voice around the truth. “I will never be a mistress.”
His expression wavered, mouth parting, but he rallied quick. “I don’t know what else I can give. My family has already written my future. They’ll never let me have anything else.”
“So you just do what they tell you, like a good little boy? You are a puppy.”
The jab struck. His eyes narrowed, his voice edged with frustration. “You are not being fair. You have no idea the pressures they place on me. You’ve spent your life wandering, free of everything that chains the rest of us.”
My spine snapped straight, fury flooding me. “Don’t make assumptions about my life. But it doesn’t matter. My mother would never force me to hide the person I love in the shadows for the sake of her precious nobility.”
His reply was cold, sharper than the air in the corridor. “Of course not. Your mother is a commoner. She wouldn’t know the first thing about being noble.”
The words landed like a blade sliced across my heart. Heat surged into my face, not from his nearness this time but from the insult, from the dismissal of everything I was.
I pushed against his chest, hard, creating space, though my pulse thundered with a thousand things unsaid. “If you want me, Orivian, it will be where the whole cursed noble and common world can see.”
I left him standing in the quiet hall, my armor still in place, his scent still clinging to me, and my heart still thundering with the battle between desire and pride.