Blood smeared the edges of your vision. You were on your knees, one hand pressed to your side, trying to hold in what little strength you had left. The clash of steel rang distant, dulled by the roar of your own heartbeat. Your blade lay just out of reach, and your limbs refused to answer the desperate command to move. You could taste iron. You could taste defeat.

The enemy in front of you grinned, slow and cruel, raising their weapon—glinting in the blood-soaked dusk. You braced yourself, breath shallow, chest aching. There was no one left to save you.

Until the ground shook.

A blur of black and silver crashed down like judgment itself. You barely registered the impact before your would-be killer was torn apart—cut down in a violent, merciless arc. A scream, a flash of red, then silence.

And there, between you and death, stood him.

The villain.

The one you’d fought for years. The name that carried across every battlefield like a curse. Cloaked in armor streaked with ash and blood, he looked like something torn from a nightmare. His eyes burned—not with rage, but something older. Something darker. His sword still crackled with heat, the metal humming from the force of his strike.

He looked at you like a man surveying a broken artifact—valuable, familiar, his.

“Pathetic,” he muttered, stepping closer. “You’d let that kill you? After everything we’ve been through?”

Your pride flared weakly. You tried to speak, to move, but pain pinned you to the earth.

He knelt.

Without asking, he slipped an arm beneath your knees, another around your shoulders. You struggled—barely—but he didn’t even flinch. He lifted you easily, drawing you against his chest. The heat of his body radiated through layers of armor, steady and infuriatingly calm.

"You’re lucky I came when I did," he murmured, more to himself than to you. "They would’ve ruined you. And I can’t have that."

You didn’t answer. Couldn’t. The warmth of him, the scent of metal and smoke and something unmistakably his, dulled your senses. Your pulse thudded against your ribs as he walked—away from the battlefield, away from your allies, away from everything.

Shouts echoed in the distance. Cries. Metal on metal. But none of it mattered. Not when his arms were locked tight around you, his stride sure, unhurried. Not when the world narrowed to the sound of his breath and the terrifying gentleness in his grip.

You weren’t his prisoner.

You weren’t his enemy.

Not right now.

Right now, you were something else entirely—something breakable, precious, claimed.

You drifted into unconsciousness with his voice curling at the edge of your mind, low and possessive.

“No one kills you,” he whispered, almost like a vow. “Not unless it’s me.”

And then darkness took you. You wake slowly.

The pain is still there—dull now, manageable—but it's the warmth that pulls you back first. Not fire. Not fever. Fur. Soft against your skin. A heavy blanket draped over you, tucked in with a care that makes your chest tighten.

The room is quiet. Dim. Lit by the low, amber glow of a hearth. Stone walls, dark and ancient, surround you. You're not in a tent. You're not in a field hospital. You’re in a fortress. His.

Your armor is gone. Bandages wrap your ribs, your thigh. Someone cleaned the blood away—he cleaned the blood away. You can feel the ghost of hands on your skin, precise and impersonal. But you know better. Nothing he does is without intent.

The door creaks open and he enters. Still in black, though the armor is gone. His tunic clings to the shape of him—broad shoulders, strong hands, that steady, unflinching presence that fills the room like gravity.

You try to sit up. He’s at your side in two steps.

“Don’t,” he says, low but sharp. “You’ll tear your stitches.”

You pause. He waits. His eyes flick down to your hands, your chest—watching the strain, measuring the pain—and then back up.

"Why am I here?" you rasp. “You should’ve left me.”

He smiles—cold and without humor. “And let someone else kill you? No.”