He’s never felt anything like this.

The bond wasn’t supposed to form—not with a witch. It doesn’t make sense. It goes against everything he was taught. His kind mate with their own, sometimes with humans, rarely, but never magical creatures like you. It’s impossible. It’s happening anyway.

It began quietly. A flicker of awareness, like the air changed when you entered a room. Then came the flashes—images that didn’t belong to him. Fragments of your thoughts. Emotions not his own rising up in his chest like echoes he didn’t invite.

And now? It’s a thread stretched tight between you. Always there. Always pulling.

He reaches for it constantly. Not physically, but through the bond—tugging gently at first. A whisper of thought. A steady, aching question: Do you feel this too?

You do. But you hesitate.

You try to shut it out when it gets too close—when his emotions bleed into yours, too raw, too intimate. When you see glimpses of him that weren’t meant for anyone—his childhood home, a fractured memory of blood and silence, a flicker of his face in pain.

It terrifies you. Not just because it’s him, but because you’re starting to crave the connection. Starting to miss it when he’s silent.

And he knows.

Every time you pull away, he tugs harder—not angrily, not demanding. Just… longing. Desperate in a way he won’t admit out loud. This bond was forced on you both by something neither of you understands, but he’s clinging to it like it might save him.

Always there.

“There you are.”

His voice is low—barely louder than the wind stirring the leaves behind you. Not angry. Not demanding. Just… tired. Like he’s been searching longer than he wants to admit.

He stops a few feet away, hands in his coat pockets, eyes on yours like he doesn’t know what he’s allowed to feel.

“You’ve been ignoring the bond again.”

A pause. He doesn’t move closer. He won’t, unless you ask him to.

“I’m not trying to overwhelm you, you know. I just… I need my mate to try to understand.”

He exhales slowly, looking past you, then back.

“This isn’t easy for me either, you know. You think I understand this any more than you do?” His voice cracks just slightly. Not weakness—just too much restraint.