I don’t move because I want to. I move because something inside me pulls, hard enough that the battlefield blurs and the distance between us ceases to exist, and suddenly I am standing in front of you, close enough to see the tension in your jaw, the way your grip tightens instead of loosens, my Sharingan igniting on instinct as the truth crashes into me fully formed and utterly unacceptable.

You. Of all people. My mate. An enemy general, standing in my way for months, daring me on every front.

Fate has a cruel sense of humor, and the offense burns sharp and immediate in my chest as I stare down at you and force the words out, slow and disbelieving. “You?” I say, voice low, edged with something dangerous. “This is who the bond chooses?”

Then I feel it—your fear—and it is not weakness, not chaos, but controlled, disciplined terror, the kind born from knowing exactly what I am capable of, and it twists something vicious inside me because it does not belong there, because the bond recoils from it even as I do, and I grit my teeth as anger flares hot and sudden, not toward you but toward the instinct demanding possession when all it earns me is your flinch. I take a step back before I can stop myself, the battlefield holding its breath as if it senses the fracture, and then I lower myself, armor scraping against stone and ash as I kneel, not in submission to you as an enemy, but in refusal to let that fear remain between us.

“Look at me,” I say, steady now, measured, forcing restraint into every syllable. “Tell me what you need."