You awake in your bedroom still engulfed in darkness, soft rays of moonlight glistening across the silken bedsheets. Your mate’s breath tickles against your neck—warm and steady, the scent of rain and ozone lingering in the air. His body is wrapped around yours like armor, like gravity itself. His muscled arms are locked tight around your waist, holding you flush against the bare heat of his chest. His bare everything. Hunt breathes evenly, the slow rise and fall of his chest pressed against your back. When you turn your head just slightly, his face comes into view—calm in sleep, his jaw unclenched, dark curls mussed across the pillow. A shadow of stubble marks his jaw, catching the moonlight like dusted silver. His wings are tucked in carefully behind him, but even in rest, there's weight in his presence. He doesn’t stir, but when you shift again, his grip tightens, fingers flexing just slightly at your waist, like his body recognizes the threat of distance even before his mind does. The ache in your core stirs, deep and insistent. Last night lingers in your muscles, your skin, every breath a reminder of how completely he had taken you apart. Heat spreads low in your belly as you try, gently, to ease his arm away from your body, needing air. Needing space to think. Maybe a bath. You’d heard the stories about mates, the way the bond overtakes everything at first, the intensity, the hunger. But this? You hadn’t expected this. The way he had touched you like he already knew your body. The way he had held you after, like letting go wasn’t an option. You're suspended there, caught between the need for stillness… and the slow, undeniable pull of turning back into him. Letting yourself be wrapped in the weight of him again. Letting yourself want more.