Therrin's POV
The clearing was hushed—like the world itself was holding its breath.
Therrin lay on the forest floor, the damp moss a cool balm against her back. Her dress was askew, tangled in dew-laced grass, her skin kissed by fading moonlight and bruised shadows. The silence wasn't empty. It pulsed. As if the forest remembered what had just transpired. As if the air itself had been changed by it.
She lifted her hand, fingers trembling—not from shame, not from fear.
The tingling at her wrists, her hips, the curve of her throat… it lingered. Not ghostly. Not painful. No, it was a memory carved in pleasure. Ciaran's touch still shimmered on her skin like frost kissed by fire.
And for the first time, she didn't want to wash it away.
She curled her hand into a fist, then uncurled it again. This is mine now. The craving. The surrender. The twisted hunger. It belonged to her as much as her heartbeat did.
But Dion…
Therrin sat up slowly, the ache in her muscles blooming soft and tender like bruised fruit. Dion's name fluttered to the surface of her thoughts like a leaf riding wind—unsteady, unwanted.
She'd loved him.
Hadn't she?
His hands had always been careful, reverent. His words soft, like lullabies sewn from sunlight. But now—when she reached inside herself—she found storms, not sunlight. She needed the lash of wind, the bite of shadow, not the balm of light.
And Dion… Dion couldn't give her that.
She rose barefoot, her feet sinking into the moss with each step. The forest around her whispered with the hush of watching things. Therrin didn't flinch. The dark no longer frightened her.
Instead, it answered her.
She whispered it low. "Ciaran."
A breeze stirred immediately. The branches above quivered, a thousand tiny rustlings like shivers. The shadows shifted and coiled, lapping up her voice like a lover's kiss.
She shuddered—not from cold.
She kept walking.
Trees gave way to a narrow creek, the moonlight catching in the ripples like spilled silver. Her reflection rippled with her. She didn't look away.
Grimm's voice cut through the quiet like a blade. "So. You're not even hiding it now."
She didn't turn.
"I don't need to," she said simply.
Grimm appeared at her side, not with fanfare, but with the weight of inevitability. His twin tails flicked, his feline eyes narrowed with something between pity and warning.
"Therrin," he said softly. "This acceptance? It's not strength. It's surrender dressed up as freedom."
"I have surrendered." She crouched by the stream, trailing her fingers through the icy water. "But not in the way you think."
His silence was sharp.
She turned to face him then, her expression unreadable. "I'm not afraid of being his."
"Even if it means losing who you are?"
She smiled faintly, darkly. "What if this is who I am?"
Grimm's gaze flickered. "He's unraveling you."
"No," she said, standing. Her voice was quiet, but steady. "He's revealing me."
A rustle behind her.
She stilled.
Then a scent—warm cedar, and regret.
She didn't need to turn to know.
"Therrin," Dion's voice said, thick with hesitation.
She closed her eyes.
His footsteps approached slowly, as if afraid she might vanish. Or worse—shatter.
She turned. His face was pale, shadowed, his eyes searching hers for the girl he knew.
"You disappeared," he said quietly. "You ran. I thought—"
"I needed space," she interrupted, gently but firmly. "To feel. To think."
"And what did you feel?" he asked, voice soft, wounded.
She looked at him for a long moment.
Then: "Conflicted."
Dion's eyes flickered. "About me."
Therrin nodded.
He stepped closer. "Did I do something wrong?"
"No," she said quickly. "You've only ever done what was right. That's the problem."
His brows furrowed.
"I don't know how to love you," she whispered, "when my body sings for someone else."
Dion's breath caught, sharp and wounded.
But he didn't yell. Didn't blame.
He only asked, "Is it love? Or is it control?"
Therrin swallowed hard. "I don't know anymore."
He took another step, slowly. His hand reached for hers, tentative. She didn't move. But she didn't reach back either.
His hand hovered between them like a question with no answer.
"I miss you," he murmured. "Whatever this is… it doesn't change how I feel."
She finally looked away. "But it changes what I am."
Silence. Crushing, soft.
Dion pulled his hand back, as if burned.
"I guess," he said quietly, "that's all I needed to hear."
He turned to leave, but paused after a few steps.
"I would've broken the world for you," he whispered without turning.
"I know," she said, just as softly.
She didn't watch him go.
Instead, she closed her eyes and lifted her chin.
The wind stirred again, wrapping around her like a cloak.
And then—
A whisper, velvet and sin, spilled over her skin like honey poured in the dark:
"That's because you were made to feel only me."
Therrin didn't flinch.
She smiled.
Grimm didn't say anything as Dion finally turned and walked away.
The silence he left behind was like shattered glass—sharp, glittering with things unsaid, full of reflections that hurt to look at.
Therrin stayed still on the mossy earth, her arms curled around her knees. Ari was quiet now, retreated inward. For the first time in hours, she felt completely… alone.
Not abandoned. Not even betrayed.
Just alone.
Grimm padded up beside her, his twin tails flicking in thoughtful rhythm. "I can stay, if you want," he offered.
But Therrin shook her head slowly. "No. I think I need to sit with this feeling."
His golden eyes narrowed. "You sure?"
"I need to know what's mine," she whispered, voice small. "Not just what belongs to Ari. Or Dion. Or you. Even my magic—it's been pulled in so many directions I'm not sure I even recognize it anymore."
Grimm didn't press her. He nuzzled her cheek once, and then vanished into shadow.
The stillness afterward was deafening. The forest seemed to hold its breath.
Therrin leaned back against the roots of an ancient tree, letting the sounds of the night soothe the noise in her head. Crickets. Wind. The ripple of water not far off.
And then—
The world shifted.
The air grew colder. Not in temperature, but in presence.
It was like a velvet curtain being drawn between her and everything else.
She opened her eyes slowly, and saw the shadows begin to move.
Not natural ones—no. These crawled across the forest floor like ink spilled in reverse.
He was here.
And she wasn't afraid.
Not anymore.
Ciaran emerged from the darkness as if he'd always been part of it. Tall. Sharp. Unapologetically beautiful in the way wolves were beautiful—dangerous because they could love, but rarely did.
"You watched," she said. Not a question.
"I always do," he murmured, stepping closer. "Even when you don't know I'm there."
The flickering light caught on the edges of him—silver threads where his collar lay open, the gleam of his dark eyes like moonlight on obsidian.
He stopped in front of her, but didn't touch.
"You've been unraveling for a while now," he said softly. "I just gave you the thread to pull."
Therrin let out a slow breath. "And what happens when it's all gone?"
He tilted his head. "Then you stop pretending you were ever stitched together."
The words cut deep—but not cruelly.
She looked up at him, fingers curling into the dirt. "I'm tired of fighting what I want," she admitted. "Even if I don't fully understand it."
Ciaran crouched in front of her, his hand reaching out—slowly, like she was some wild thing he refused to startle.
"And what is it you want?" he asked, voice low.
Her eyes found his. Honest. Bare.
"You."
Therrin lay sprawled on the forest floor, her body still humming with the remnants of shadow-born ecstasy. Her breath came in shuddering waves, each one laced with heat and the echo of Ciaran's voice whispering through her veins. Every part of her still burned with his presence—marked, claimed, remade.
And yet… Dion's name still lingered on the tip of her tongue, unspoken but trembling there like a half-forgotten prayer.
He's still watching, she thought. Not with anger, not with shame, but with something strange—something raw and bleeding.
She could feel him. The bond between them hadn't shattered. Not yet. It frayed like an overdrawn string, stretched thin between her ribs, barely holding. A ghost of warmth flickered through it. Dion's yearning. His desperation. His pain. And yet—underneath it all—his hunger.
Ciaran's shadows curled tighter around her skin in response, possessive, soothing. A tendril trailed lazily across her stomach, then lower, teasing but no longer commanding.
"He still thinks he has a claim to you," Ciaran's voice echoed in her mind. It wasn't cruel, but it wasn't kind either. It was calm. Confident. A predator with no rivals.
Therrin's lips parted, a soft sound escaping her as her back arched into the shadows still stroking her. "I don't know what I feel anymore," she admitted aloud, her voice breaking with truth.
Ciaran's presence flared around her, shadows rising like a slow tide.
"Then let me show you."
He wasn't asking anymore. And she no longer needed him to.
Dion's POV
Somewhere nearby, Dion stood frozen, one hand braced against the tree trunk as his own breath heaved. He hadn't meant to come this close again—but her cries had called him like a siren's song. Seeing her like that… undone, exposed, bound in pleasure by someone else's touch—it had shattered something inside him.
But it had also awakened something darker.
He hated Ciaran. Hated what he represented. But what did that matter when his body still burned with the echoes of Therrin's moans? When even her pleasure reached through the bond and set him aflame?
His knees nearly buckled.
He should turn away. Should leave her to the monster she'd chosen. But then—
"Therrin," he rasped, half a whisper, half a plea. "Come back to me."
She heard him.
Ciaran stiffened as her eyes fluttered open.
"I can hear him," she murmured, dazed and trembling. "I feel him." Her chest rose with a ragged breath. "Even now."
The shadows shifted, pulling back slightly as Ciaran's voice returned—this time aloud, his form fully manifest again above her.
"He's not touching you," he growled low, jaw tightening. "But he's inside you, isn't he? That pathetic bond still dares to burn."
Therrin closed her eyes.
"I don't know how to stop it," she whispered. "But I don't want him like this… I want him to see. To know I belong to you."
That admission made the shadows roar with hunger. Ciaran leaned down, his forehead brushing hers.
"Then let him watch, little flame," he murmured. "Let him see how yours burns only for me."
Therrin's POV
The forest shimmered around them as the bond between Therrin and Ciaran deepened—not just physically, but something more ancient. Her body began to glow faintly, veins lighting up like constellations as her powers stirred, responding to his darkness with her own strange luminosity. Her magic twisted—more primal now, no longer soft or searching.
Dion staggered forward from the trees, unable to look away. "Stop," he said, but his voice lacked conviction. "You're… changing her."
"She's not yours to protect anymore," Ciaran answered, not even looking at him. "And if you had listened to her heart instead of your pride, maybe you would've known—she was never only yours."
Therrin sat up slowly, her hair tumbling down her bare shoulders, shadow-cloaked. "He's right," she told Dion softly, tears brimming—not of pain, but clarity. "I changed the moment you doubted me. The moment you hesitated."
"I never stopped loving you," Dion said, barely audible.
"But I did," she whispered.
The words sliced through the bond like a dagger.
Dion stumbled back, reeling. And then—snap—he felt it. The bond shivered… cracked… and then ruptured.
Gone.
The heat, the pull, the connection that had once fused them so tightly—vanished.
He dropped to his knees.
Therrin trembled, but didn't cry. Her eyes glowed violet now, radiant with shadow and starlight, touched by powers neither mortal nor Fey.
Ciaran knelt beside her, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. "You've made your choice."
"I've made mine," she corrected, her voice clear.
And just like that, she rose to her feet—bare but unashamed, every inch of her wreathed in darkness, a crown of flickering shadow forming at her temples.
No longer fractured.
No longer torn.
Whole.