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The silence grows teeth. Bites a little.

I shift, pulling the blankets tighter around me. The nest I built earlier - so instinctive, so perfect - feels less like a sanctuary now and more like a pillow fort of emotional instability.

There’s still a dumb part of me - small, unreasonable, 100% the drama queen in me - that expects him to crash through the door, shirt half-undone, voice full of gravel, and just take me.

But the door stays closed.

Still. Still. Still.

The ache that rises up in me isn’t heat this time; it’s something colder.Sadder. The hope within me deflates like a balloon losing air and dignity at the same time, and I pull Kai’s hoodie tighter around myself and breathe it in like it’s going to fix anything.

It doesn’t. It just smells like mischief and sweat and like a guy who probably owns way too many protein shakers.

It’s nice. It’s comforting.

It’s not what I wanted.

I didn’t think Lucian would tear down walls, exactly, but I thought he’dfeelme. That weird almost-bond between us still hums under my skin, faint and flickering, like a radio signal I can’t quite tune in.

I stretch toward it instinctively - just a little. Just enough to say:I’m here. I need.

But there’s nothing.

No answer. No pressure.

Not even the emotional equivalent of a voicemail beep.

The emptiness where he should be cuts deeper than the silence ever could.

Maybe he’s busy. Maybe something came up. Maybe Ash and Kai are wrestling shirtless in the hallway and Lucian’s too annoyed to deal with it.

…Or maybe it’s me.

Maybe I crossed some invisible line. Maybe seeing me with the others was too much. Maybe he thinks I’ve already been claimed - too messy, too marked, too late.

And god, I hate that that thought makes my chest ache.

I tuck myself deeper into the nest like it’ll protect me from rejection, or reality. Pillows are piled against my back, one under each arm like they might form a makeshift boyfriend if I squint hard enough.

I bury my face in Kai’s hoodie and take a deep breath, because if I cry again, I’m blaming the heat and the hormones and not the fact that I just got ghosted by my favorite brooding alpha in the middle of an emotional vulnerability spiral.

It’s fine. I’m fine.

This is fine.

I mean, is it sad that I almost let myself imagine something permanent? That I thought maybe, just maybe, he felt it too?

Probably.

But that’s where I am now. Naked in a blanket fort of my own desperation, having a full existential crisis over a man who growls for a living.

I roll over, drag a pillow against my chest, and cling to it like it owes me comfort. It’s not Lucian. It doesn’t smell like steel and command and ruin-your-life sex appeal. But it’s soft. It’shere. It’s something.

And right now, something will have to do.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Lucian

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