Page 44 of Tattooed Vow

I pour coffee with unsteady hands, forcing my mind to latch onto anything else—the fog curling through the trees, the frost webbing the windows, the distant hush of the forest. Anything but her. Anything but the growing ache in my chest whenever she looks at me with those soft, trusting eyes.

I hear the floorboards creaking behind me a few minutes later. She’s awake. I knew she would be. She sleeps as lightly as Ido these days, jumping at shadows, eyes scanning every room before entering. Being on the run would do that to anyone.

“You okay?” Her voice is soft, still rasped with sleep, but with an edge of concern that cuts through me.

I don’t look back. I can’t. Not when the nightmare is still so vivid, not when I can still hear her screams echoing in my head. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn't,” she murmurs, padding into the kitchen barefoot. She wraps the flannel blanket tighter around her frame, the thick wool swallowing her slender figure. Her hair is tousled, falling in soft waves around her face, and the shadows under her eyes match my own. “I didn't sleep well.”

I hand her the second mug I poured. The routine we've fallen into without discussion. “Me neither.”

She takes it, our fingers brushing, and the contact sends a bolt of heat straight through me. I pull back as if burned, but she doesn’t notice. She lifts the mug to her lips and inhales the steam with a small sigh.

“It’s this place,” she says after a long sip. “Too quiet.”

I grunt in agreement and step past her to check my phone, pretending to focus on the messages. There is no movement on Morozov's end, and there are no sightings near our previous location. The trail has gone cold, which should be reassuring but only sets me on edge. Morozov isn’t the type to give up easily.

But my eyes keep drifting back to her, leaning against the counter, face soft with sleep, lips parted slightly from the warmth of the mug. The blanket slipped, revealing the curve of her shoulder and the delicate line of her collarbone. She’swearing a faded rock band T-shirt, the fabric swimming on her small frame, and something primal twists in my gut at the sight.

I remember how those lips tasted, soft, hesitant at first, then hungry. I remember the way she arched into me, her hands finding their way under my shirt, tracing the scars that marked my skin. I remember the sound she made when I pulled away, a small, disappointed sigh that nearly broke my resolve. And it takes everything in me to look away.

“Dimitri?”

I turn. She isn’t looking at me. Her eyes are fixed on the steam rising from her mug, her expression distant, lost in memories I can’t touch.

“Do you ever feel like the past just claws at you? Like it won’t let you breathe.”

“Da,” I reply. “All the time.”

“My parents were both addicts. I used to wonder if they even remembered me, or if the drugs had wiped me clean from their minds.”

I grip the edge of the counter hard enough to feel the wood bite into my palms. I know what it is to be forgotten, to be secondary to an addiction. My father's love affair with power left similar scars, invisible but deep.

She swallows, the sound audible in the quiet kitchen. “When I turned eighteen, I tried to find my dad. Not because I wanted a relationship. I just needed to know. Closure, maybe. Turns out he died when I was fourteen. Liver failure. He'd been released from prison two years before.”

She looks at me then, eyes unreadable, a combination of defiance and vulnerability that hits me square in the chest.

“Guess I don't come from the best stock.”

I step closer before I can stop myself. “Don’t say that.”

“Why not? It’s true.” Her laugh is brittle and defensive.

“Because you’re not your parents,malyshka. You survived them. That takes strength that most people don’t understand.”

She looks away, blinking fast, and I know she is fighting back tears. My hands itched to reach for her, to pull her against me and shield her from the memories that haunt her.

I clench my fists, holding myself together by sheer force of will. But inside, I’m coming apart. All I want is to pull her into my arms and swear she’ll never have to feel that kind of pain again. To give her the safety I never believed in for myself. But she doesn’t need someone like me. She needs someone steady. Someone who doesn’t wake up from dreams of her being taken, ready to burn the world down to get her back. Someone whose enemies aren’t hunting them.

“We should patrol the perimeter again today,” I say gruffly, putting distance between us.

“Okay,” she nods slowly.

The moment stretches, full of everything we aren’t saying. The air between us is charged, electric, with possibility and danger in equal measure.

“Dimitri, about last night…”

Her voice breaks on the last word, and that shatters me more than anything else has. Before I can stop myself, I close thespace between us, my hand rising to cradle her cheek, my thumb tracing the delicate line of her jaw. She leans into the touch, unthinking and instinctive, and her eyes flutter closed.

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