She could still feel it. Three hours, a shower, and a change of clothes later, and Gavriel Sterling’s mouth was still on hers like a ghost that wouldn’t leave. Some mistakes don’t wash off. They just wait for you to confess them.

A letter would have let her tell him from a distance. But Serena Drakenfell wasn’t a coward, and tonight wasn’t going to change that.

Instead, she walked to his room and whispered, "Can I sit with you?"

Dex didn’t look up. He was staring at the fire like it owed him answers, the whiskey in his hand untouched, his bruised knuckles still swollen from what he’d done to Gav an hour ago.

"Yes," he finally said.

She crossed the room and sat at the chair opposite him.

"Dex, I need to tell you something." Her voice cracked, and her eyes already started welling. She had practiced this by herself so she wouldn’t cry when she told him, and she was breaking before she even started.

He didn’t respond or turn his head.

"The scroll today made a one-time portal when I touched it. I shouldn’t have..." she wiped her eyes. "After we got the Moonthread Amulet, Gav told me he was in love with me."

Nothing. No acknowledgement. No muscle moved. Just stone-cold empty.

"He kissed me. I kissed him back."

Silence.

"It happened so quickly, I wasn’t expecting it. And I pushed him away. But it still happened, and I have no excuse. I am so sorry, Dex."

The fire popped. A log shifted. Embers rose and vanished.

Dex still didn’t look at her. His face was closed. Sealed. The version of Dexmon Drakenfell that she had never seen. The version that had nothing behind the eyes except walls.

"Is that everything?"

The question was clinical. Inventory. A man checking whether the full report had been delivered before deciding what to do with it.

"Yes."

"And you kissed him back."

"Yes." Her voice was smaller now. She hated that it was smaller.

Dex set the glass on the table beside him. The clink of it was the loudest sound in the room. He leaned back in the chair and looked at the fire instead of her.

"I need you to leave."

The words hollowed her out in a way that only he could.

"Okay." Her voice was steady. "I understand."

She stood and moved to the door.

"I am sorry, Dex, for everything." Her voice broke at the end. She opened the door and left.

Dex didn’t move.

The fire was dying. The whiskey was still full. His bruised hand was gripping the armrest, and the leather was creaking under the pressure, and the room smelled like her and the absence of her at the same time.

He could feel her through the matebond. The grief was pouring through in waves, each one heavier than the last, and he sat in the chair and received every single one and did nothing about it. All of it coming through clean and clear, the way it always did, because their connection had never once failed to deliver her to him in perfect fidelity.

Three seconds.

Three seconds of his mate’s mouth on his best friend’s mouth. Three seconds of her hand in Gav’s hair. Three seconds of a version of herself, given to a man who had no claim to it.

He replayed it. Again. Again.

His grip on the armrest tightened. The leather groaned.

He didn’t go to the door.

✦✦✦

"Thank the gods." Fin crossed the room in three strides and pulled her into him so hard her boots left the floor for half a second. His arms locked around her.

"I missed you so goddamn much. Couldn’t sleep last night without you here."

His hand found the back of her head. He tilted her face up and kissed her. Slow. Certain. The kind of kiss that started as a greeting and turned into a question.

Her lips moved against his but there was nothing behind them, and Fin felt the difference immediately because Fin felt everything immediately and that was the problem with being mated to a man who operated on instinct the way most people operated on oxygen.

He pulled back. His hands stayed on her face, thumbs on her cheekbones.

"Serena."

She didn’t answer.

His eyes moved over her face the way they always did when he was trying to read her. Systematic. Fast. The swollen eyes. The blotched skin. The tight jaw. The composure that had already been lost and rebuilt and lost again, and what was standing in front of him now was the version that came after all of that. The version that had nothing left to hold.

Xeon: She is healed. Her ribs and back are all healed. She has been crying for hours.

Fin: I can see that.

Xeon: Fix it.

Fin: Working on it.

"What happened?"

She opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

Nothing came out.

Then the hiccup came, sharp and involuntary, the kind that arrives when the chest has been through too much and the lungs have forgotten their rhythm.

"I c— I can’t."

Another hiccup. Her hand pressed against her sternum like she was trying to hold the sound inside. It didn’t work. The next one was worse, shaking her shoulders, and the one after that stole her breath entirely.

She was past crying. This was the wreckage that came after, when the tears had run dry and the body was still trying to process what the mind couldn’t hold.

"Hey.... hang on... you don’t have to say it right this second." Fin sat in an armchair and pulled her into his lap.

His arms wrapped around her with the specific pressure that said I am here.

He could feel her through the matebond. Guilt. Grief. Shame. Fear. They were layered so thick he couldn’t separate them, pouring through the connection like floodwater through a cracked wall. Whatever had happened tonight had broken something in her, and the wreckage was still settling.

"You don’t have to tell me tonight." 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

"Y-yes I do. And y-you won’t want me here after I do."

Fin frowned at that. "No. I always want you here."

Her hiccups came back with the tremors in her shoulders. She put her face in her hands.

"Serena. Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it. What happened, baby?"

She inhaled sharply. Fin waited.

"T-t-today. Gav-" She stopped. Hiccuped.

Fin’s face darkened. But he didn’t interrupt.

Xeon: I will kill him.