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I stumble back a step, then another.

Great. Here come the shaky legs again. Not from heat this time - no, that would be too on-brand - but from something colder. Sharper.

The ice-bucket-to-the-chest kind of humiliation that creeps in behind your ribs and settles like a permanent roommate.

It floods my chest like ice water, sinking straight to the pit of my stomach.

The shirt I’m wearing clings to me like a brand.

It still smells like him. Like betrayal, wealth, and cedar-scented ego. I want to tear it off. I want to rip it in half and use it to mop the floor -

Or maybe just set it on fire and toast a marshmallow over it while Lucian watches.

From hell.

I want tonot care.Fuck, I want to be above this. To toss my hair and strut out barefoot with unfazed pop-star energy and no regrets.

But no. My chest is caving in like I’m a balloon someone sat on. My ribs feel two sizes too small. And my heart - my idiot, codependent, betrayal-kink-having heart - still reaches for him through the bond, as though to say,maybe he didn’t mean it?

But oh, he meant it.

The bond, though? It doesn’t care. It doesn’t give a single solitary shit about logic or dignity. It’s just there, like some clingy ghost cable that wraps around my soul and starts tugging the second I try to move on.

But I’m done. I have cried - oh, I have cried - for people who didn’t choose me. I have wept for men who thought I was too much while still trying to take pieces of me for free.

I am not doing that again.

Lucian Vale wants all or nothing?

Then he getsnothing.

Let him keep his silence. His control. His stupid bespoke suits and five-million-dollar abandonment issues.

I’m not his little omega doll to hoard and hide and punish for not waiting politely in a corner. I’m not a prize that got damaged in transit.

My heart still pulses painfully, still thudding out a desperate beat for someone who just spit me out like I was already ruined.

But I’m not. I'm not shattered, nor am I broken.

Even bleeding, even bare, even standing in a shirt that suddenly feels like a lie -

I am the whole goddamn fire, and fire doesn’t ask for permission - it just burns.

And if he thought he could light me up, walk away, and still keep my warmth without getting burned; then that’s on him.

I didn’t ask for any of this, and I certainly didn’t ask for him to want me. I was quite happy with him being a fantasy,forever.

But hedid. He leaned in, he let me feel something, he let the bond happen - and now what? He's punishing me for letting someone else love me too, even though he knew all along I wanted them all?

The bond between us thrums, raw and ragged like it’s trying to apologize.

It doesn’t get to. Not today.

Let it ache. Let him feel it.

Let every breath without me taste like ash.

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