“Did you…”

  Thick emotion closes its fingers around my throat, squeezing until every breath is a chore, and I suck in a shuddering inhale that rattles in my chest as I stare at the patchwork of cuts on his thighs.

  “Did you do this to yourself?”

  “Bash,” he whimpers, voice so small and even more broken.

  “Why?” The question tears from me as my fingers continue tracing the cuts. “Why would you do this? Why would you hurt yourself?”

  My hands roam over his skin even as he shakes his head in a silent plea for me to stop.

  Searching for more, driven by a need I can’t name, I push at the hem of his shirt and lift it higher.

  A mournful, animalistic wail slips loose from my throat.

  “Xeni, what is this?”

  His mark used to be the same warm chestnut brown as my skin, but now it’s pitch black and wrong, twisted and unnatural, puckered and drawn tight like scar tissue pulled too harsh over a wound that never healed. Rough beneath my fingertips, raised and jagged, it’s a grotesque shadow of what it once was.

  Blinding anger surges through me as my eyes move higher, ready to demand answers, but it’s swept away by the brokenness I find there.

  His face is etched in anguish, and his single eye is an endless pool of sorrow deep enough to drown in.

  I can’t bear it.

  I wrap my arms around his back and pull him forward, tucking his face into the curve of my neck as his first sob breaks free, muffled and shattering against my skin. I stroke his hair in slow, soothing passes, cupping the back of his head and holding him close.

  He fits perfectly against me like no time has passed, and for once, I don’t fight the need to keep him there.

  “What happened to you?” I whisper into his hair.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he cries against my neck. The words are jarred and broken by his sobs, each one a shudder that racks his frame.

  “It matters to me,” I say, pressing my lips to his temple. “Please, just tell me.”

  “It doesn’t matter… nothing mattered until you, and then you were gone, and nothing mattered again. I hate it, I hate everything, and I hate them!”

  His voice rises until it fractures with the volume, and his fists clench tighter in my shirt as fresh tears soak the fabric.

  “Nothing matters…” Xeni’s voice cracks, the words dissolving into a choked sob as he buries his face deeper into my shirt. “It doesn’t matter!”

  His whole body trembles against mine in violent shudders as he clings to me like I’m his only anchor to the earth. His fingers dig in, like letting go would shatter him completely.

  I pull back enough to meet his gaze, and he scrambles to hold on tighter like he thinks I’m walking away. “It’s alright, Xen. I’m not going anywhere. Let’s get you somewhere comfortable.”

  “Xen?” he whispers with another quiet sob, and gods, he sounds so hopeful.

  “Yeah,” I say, pressing my face into his hair and breathing him in despite the pain. “My Xen. My peace.”

  He cries harder as I scoop him into my arms. Curious heads turn as I carry him through the hallway, but I ignore them. Xeni’s face stays buried in my neck, his warmth leaching into me and heating the edges of that soul deep cold I’ve carried for so long.

  I balance him to unlock the door to my bedroom, where the dimness inside is broken only by the fading sunset filtering through the curtains. I shut the door behind us, the click loud in the quiet.

  Xeni sniffles and lifts his head, glancing around the room before meeting my eyes. Neither of us says a word as I lay him on the bed and separate his knees once more.

  “I’m going to clean you up,” I say softly.

  His lip trembles, but he nods, and his gaze follows me into the bathroom and out again.

  “This might sting,” I say with an apologetic grimace.

  “That’s alright,” he whispers, though he winces when I dab alcohol over the open cut.

  “You need to drink some water,” I say as I hand him a bottle. “It takes a lot to get you this drunk, Xeni.”

  “Yeah,” he mutters before he takes a few long swallows.

  I take the bottle and guide his head to the pillow. He watches me as I pull the blankets around him.

  “Smells like you,” he murmurs, snuggling deeper with a sleepy, wobbling smile. “Only you.”

  “Only me,” I agree, voice thick.

  I run my fingers through his hair as he hums contentedly. He’s beautiful even like this—tear-streaked and vulnerable, with his eye red-rimmed and swollen.

  “Get some rest, okay?”

  He nods, breath already evening out as I place the water bottle on the bedside table.

  The empty space beside him feels like a battle zone, loaded with a minefield of memories that could detonate with the slightest wrong move.

  Lying there now would be reckless.

  It would pull me straight into territory I’ve spent years trying to barricade myself against.

  I compromise by dragging the armchair closer, and the legs scrape softly against the floor until it’s only a foot from the bed. I drop into it with a sigh that comes from the deepest part of me, exhaustion and something more tender settling over my shoulders as I watch him.

  He’s asleep within minutes, soft breaths filling the quiet.

  I sit there in the growing dark, watching him, and the weight of everything presses down until I can barely breathe.

  The scars.

  The ring.

  The truth he still hasn’t fully given me.

  For tonight, this is close enough.

  Xeni

  War drums echo in my skull, and my mouth is so dry my tongue clings to the roof like a flag of surrender. I try to pull memories from the incessant thudding in my brain, and the night comes back to me in a fuzzy blur.

  Ordering Talia to unlock my door.

  Swiping a few bottles of booze from the cupboards.

  Deciding I needed to wear one of Bash’s shirts, and how we giggled on our way to the laundry room.

  “Fuck,” I whisper, refusing to open my eye and face the new wave of headache the light will undoubtedly stir to life. I reach for the edge of the bed and the water bottle I keep stored there, but my hand thunks into more mattress.

  Confused, I crack my eye open and find my face smooshed into a fluffy pillow in a large, clean room. Bookshelves line the wall, and a familiar stack of comic books rests on the shelf directly in front of me.

  My heart races as I take a deep breath, breathing in his scent.

  “How are you feeling this morning?” Bash asks from behind me, his voice gentle.

  I roll to find him sitting in a chair beside the bed.

  His smile is heavy as he leans in and pushes the hair from my face. “Do you have a headache?”

  “A little,” I manage to rasp through my confusion.

  He breathes a laugh, and I wonder where this tenderness is coming from.

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” he says, “considering how much of my good rum you polished off last night.”

  I open my mouth, but words fail me again.

  “Drink this.” He hands me a cold water before he stands and walks through a doorway across the room. Water runs from inside, and as I’m greedily finishing my drink, Bash returns with a toothbrush and another glass to rinse my mouth.

  “Thank you,” I mutter, thankful for the care even if I don’t understand its source.

  He takes everything back when I’m finished, and I’m still watching him carefully as he walks it to the bathroom then returns.

  “Why are you being nice to me?” I ask.

  Try as he might to hide it, I don’t miss the sorrow in his eyes. Bash sits back in his chair and drags his thumb across his mouth like he does when he’s deep in thought, and I take another long sip of water to distract myself from the loaded silence.

  “How much do you remember about last night?” he asks after a long stretch.

  I duck my head as my cheeks flush. “Um, I remember most of it at the beginning. I was… mad.”

  “Mad?” he repeats.

  When I glance up, his brow is lifted, and the barbell reflects the light. It accentuates the motion, but he seems more curious than angry.

  I nod. “You were ignoring me.”

  “Yeah, you never did well with that,” he mutters.

  Despite the tension, I huff a quiet laugh. “That’s putting it mildly.”

  “So, you were mad, and…?” he presses.

  I shift uncomfortably as I sit taller and recline against the headboard. “And I made Talia release me. We, uh, got into the liquor cabinet…”

  “Uh huh,” he drawls.

  My lips twitch in a tiny grin. “Then I, um, stole your shirt and… well…”

  “Barged into my meeting half naked?”

  “Yeah,” I say with a cringe. “Yep. That’s the gist of it.”

  “What do you remember after that?”

  “Not much,” I admit, chancing a glance up to meet his eyes. “Though I’m quite curious how I ended up in your bed.”

  My teasing falls flat, and Bash leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees.

  Nothing would've happened between us last night. Bash would never take advantage of me in that condition, regardless of how much I begged.

  I cringe.

  I'm sure I begged.

  “Lay back,” he finally says, then stands and hovers over me.

  My neck cranes to follow his eyes as I try to read them. They’re intense, and I swallow hard as I nod and let my back fall onto the mattress.

  Bash tugs the blankets, then levels me with a stern glare as I scramble to hold on to them. I force another hard swallow as I let my hands fall limply at my sides.

  He pulls the sheets away, and shame burns hot on my face as he stares at my thighs.

  Slowly, he kneels, then slides his arms along the mattress until he grips my hips and tugs my body closer. Deft fingers lift my shirt and push the side of my underwear down.

  His fingertips drift over my mark. “What happened?”

  “Bash, no,” I whine.

  “I deserve to know.”

  The firm grip on my hips leaves no room for argument, but the sternness of his voice is countered by the gentle way he leans forward and kisses that cursed skin.

  “Xen, please,” he murmurs as his lips drag over my hipbone.

  My resolve falters, and I squeeze my eye closed. “I told you they found out,” I finally say.

  He freezes like he didn’t expect an answer before he sits back on his feet, his thumb still tracing delicate little shapes over my skin.

  “But,” I continue, “I didn’t tell you everything that came with that.”

  “I’m listening.”

  My eye opens and I stare at the ceiling for a minute, gathering my courage.

  I never wanted him to know about this part of my past… never wanted him to carry the weight of what was done to me.

  My hand slides to my hip, covering his as we trace the mark together. “This was my penance.”

  “For what?” he asks.

  “Hiding us. Lying about being mates. It was the price I paid to keep you safe.”

  His hand stops moving in those comforting pets and flexes against my hip. “What do you mean by that?”

  My breath shakes as I brace myself for what’s coming, the silence stretched so thin that one heartbeat might crack it wide open.

  “When Aeliphis found out, she was going to report it to Leadership,” I explain, “and I couldn’t allow that to happen. I couldn’t put you in that sort of danger, so I begged her. Told her I’d do whatever it took to keep you safe, and she… offered me a deal.”

  “What sort of deal?”

  “I don’t want to talk about this,” I whine.

  Bash cups my hip like he’s hugging it, soothing me even as I prepare to break his heart all over again.

  “If we’re ever going to move past this, I need to hear it,” he says.

  “Can we move past it?”

  Temporary insanity forces me to ask the question before I can consider its consequences, and I don’t dare to even breathe as I wait for his answer.

  He stares at me, and I can see the assessment in his eyes as he considers it. Risk and cost on one side, potential reward on the other, and each passing second another shift in the balance.

  The longer he takes, the further my heart falls.

  “I don’t know,” he finally says, and the honesty lands like a blow. “But this is how we try, Xen. This is what I need to figure that out. What sort of deal did you make?”

  “Aeliphis agreed to report that you died,” I say, the words tasting like ash. “That way, no one would look for you. Only a few people knew about us—the ones she trusted. They filed a report saying we were mated, but that you were killed in an accident right after. And they…” I trail off with a shaky exhale.

  He strokes his thumb over my hip again. “They what, princess?”

  Deep, desperate longing overtakes my body at the pet name, and I tighten my hand over his.

  “They said you had to disappear,” I whisper as a single tear slips free from my eye. “You had to disappear and I couldn’t know where you were, because no one would believe it if the pain wasn’t real. They knew I’d come after you if I had any idea where they’d taken you, and…”

  My quiet sob fills the empty space, and Bash releases a pained whine as he climbs my body and wraps his arms around my back. He hugs me so tightly I can barely breathe, and I revel in the loss of air as I squeeze him back.

  “I had to do it,” I whisper. “I swore I’d protect you, and I had to keep you safe.”

  “You said you’d kept tabs on me, though.”

  “It took me almost two years to find you and when I learned you were here…” I trail off, but Bash’s mind is already two steps ahead.

  “What about the other side of this deal?” he demands as he pulls back to look at me. “What did they get from doing this?”

  “She wanted to… study me,” I whisper as his heartbreak turns to fury. “She… she wanted to see what would happen when we were separated. Learn how the bond would react when we were forced to be so far apart. She wanted to see how it affected me and my health, and what it would do to my mind. Every night after work, they’d pull me into a lab, and they’d…”

  I trail off, but after years of seeing the horrors performed in that place, I don’t need to go into details. Anything he imagines is equally as horrific as the reality, and it doesn’t need to be spoken out loud.

  “What else?” he rasps.

  My lip quivers as I fight to steady my breathing. “They tried to… sever the bond—”

  “Xen,” he whispers, horrified.

  I shake my head, needing to get it out now while I have the courage. “They tried, over and over again, but they couldn’t do it. It…”

  Another quiet sob leaves me as he watches, shock slacking his face.

  “It fought back. It wouldn’t… wouldn’t let them. It almost killed me, Bash, and they backed off. Went back to studying me and…”

  “How long did this go on?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” I try to look away, but he grips my chin and holds me there, eye to eye.

  “How long?” he whispers.

  My lip trembles at the memory of being strapped into those chairs and onto those tables. The bindings weren’t to stop me from running. My need to protect Bash guaranteed I'd stay.

  It was to prevent the agony from sending my body onto the floor.

  To hold my flailing limbs still so their studies wouldn’t be interrupted.

  To keep my arching spine from launching me across the room because the pain demanded it.

  “It never stopped,” I answer quietly. “They were never planning on stopping.”

  Bash’s entire body quakes with his outrage. “But you said… you said the chief was moved to Glaston. She wasn’t there anymore.”

  A wet, humorless laugh pushes from my nose as I shake my head. “And I also said I was moved with her. She fully intended to keep me under her thumb for the rest of my life. It was a stalemate. She had my secret, and I had hers, but the stakes were never the same. Her sacrifice would’ve been her life. Mine would’ve been yours.”

  Bash worries his lip as he stares at me, then he slowly slides down my body to kneel at my feet.

  My lip quivers harder as his hands skirt over my thighs, and I stare at the wall because I can’t bear to watch whatever crosses his face at the inspection.

  “Is that why you did this?” he asks. “Because the pain was too much?”

  “No.” My fingers shake as they drift over my gnarled mark. “This was their punishment.”

  My hand moves lower, my eye closing as I trace the scars on my thighs. “These were mine.”

  “Punishment for what?”

  “Hurting you,” I whisper on a shaky breath. “I don’t… I don’t have to tell you what it was like to be separated from you. It felt like dying, and most days, I thought death might be the better choice. The guilt of knowing it was my mistake that caused this, of knowing that I was the source of your pain, was just too fucking much. I had lost everything. I’d lost you. My sense of purpose. My control over any part of my life.”

  The blankets bunch between my fingers as my thighs jump under his touch. “It was only when I was hurting that I could breathe.”

  “Xeni,” he whispers, and gods, there’s so much pain in his voice.

  “It was the only thing that gave me any relief,” I admit in a whisper.

  He’s quiet as I take a few flimsy inhales and stuttered exhales, but then his hands drag across my thighs again.

  “This is done, Xen. It’s finished. I will not sit back and watch you hurt yourself.”

  “Then don’t make me go,” I plead. “Don’t make me leave. Don’t…” A quiet sob echoes through the room as another tear tracks my skin. “Don’t tell me this is over.”

  Bash’s fingers roam my inner thighs before pushing them apart, and I draw in a breath as his lips land over the raised marks.

  He travels a slow path across my skin, deliberate in every soft kiss as he inches up my legs. He pauses as he reaches my upper thigh, his breath heavy against my skin.