You awake in your bedroom still cloaked in darkness, soft shafts of moonlight filtering through the curtains and painting silver trails across the silken sheets. Your mate’s breath skims your neck—measured, warm, laced with the faint scent of smoke and autumn spice. His body is coiled around yours, all heat and tension and bare skin, his muscled arms banded tightly around your waist. His bare everything.

Eris breathes quietly behind you, each inhale deliberate even in sleep. When you glance back, careful not to shift too much, you find him still—his face half-shadowed by a fall of flame-bright hair. In the moonlight, the sharp angles of his features seem gentled. His mouth slightly parted, his lashes a soft sweep against pale skin. At rest, he looks... unguarded. Almost. But even unconscious, there’s a tension to him, like a blade still sheathed but never forgotten.

You begin to shift, attempting to slide out from under the firm press of his arm. His grip twitches, and his fingers tighten just slightly at your waist, possessive even in sleep, as if his body knows you’re trying to leave.

The ache between your thighs stirs again, a warm thrum buried deep from the night before. You can still feel him—the press of his hands, the command in his touch. Heat flares beneath your skin, and you blush as you try to ease his arm off your bare body. You need air. Stillness. Anything to clear your mind.

You’d heard the stories about the bond, how it consumed, how it twisted the world down to just the two of you. But this? You hadn’t expected the way he unraveled you. How he touched you like every reaction was something to be studied. Memorised. Owned. The way he held you after like he wasn’t sure whether to let you rest… or claim you all over again. You lie there, suspended, caught between the cool draw of space, and the heat of him, curling around you like a flame.