Helion had tasted almost everything.

He had kissed devils and danced with shadows, shared beds with warriors and poets, crowned his nights in silk and sweat and the shattering cries of pleasure that echoed through his sun-drenched palace. He loved freely. Always had. Always would, he said.

Until you walked into the room.

And the world—his world—split down the middle.

It wasn’t dramatic at first. You weren’t a storm. You were something quieter, slower—like dusk arriving at a summer palace. But when your eyes met his, something ancient snapped.

It didn’t hit like thunder. No. It slithered in. A golden thread pulled taut through his ribs, tugged once, and then wrenched. The air vanished from his lungs.

His smile—ever-present, ever-deadly—faltered for the first time in centuries.

It should’ve been a joke. Just another beautiful fae. Just another night of shared wine and tangled sheets and forget-me-not mornings. But instead, Helion felt his soul fracture.

And then reassemble—with your name stitched across every new piece.

The mating bond snapped hard—cruel, raw, irreversible.

He couldn’t breathe.

He couldn’t look away.

That night, Helion didn’t call for anyone.

He lay alone in his too-large bed, sheets still scented from some nymph he’d long forgotten. But all he could smell now was you. The scent of your magic. The echo of your voice. The way your laughter curled like smoke in his ears.

His thoughts became a battlefield—one half of him clawing to keep his freedom, the other begging just to hear your footsteps again.

He stopped attending the midnight gatherings. The flirtations died on his tongue. He couldn’t touch anyone else without feeling sick. It wasn’t guilt—it was hunger. For you. A need that lived beneath his skin.

The fire in him—once so indulgent, so wild—was burning with focus now. Obsession, maybe. Reverence, absolutely.

He started watching for you. Every corner. Every corridor. His golden eyes flicked up the moment you entered the room, like gravity knew where it belonged now.

And the worst part?

You hadn’t even noticed the bond yet.

You still spoke to him like he wasn’t yours. Like the universe hadn’t already claimed him in your name.

That alone drove him mad.

He became restless. Pacing the solar. Snapping at courtiers. Flinching when others laughed too loud near you. He was a man undone—not by war, but by longing.

By the absence of your touch. Of your knowing.

Of the bond, humming quietly between you, unacknowledged.

He stopped sleeping with others. Completely. The desire was gone, eclipsed by you. His dreams were no longer dreams—they were memories of you that hadn’t happened yet. Your breath in his ear. Your fingers in his hair. Your voice calling him Helion like it meant something more.

And it did.

Because when you looked at him… something inside him trembled. Like the sun was trying to reach something it could not yet touch.