Page 75 of Claimed By the Mothman
She arrived on his floor and walked forward, each step steadier than the last. She stopped at his door.
Knocked. Then knocked again.
—
The unraveling had stopped, but the memory of it lingered in his body.
Had he held to this liminal space for too long? The space between a bond claimed and a bond accepted? He did not know. There were so few rejections that they were more a sense of myth and legend. Some individuals survived, bruised but not broken, while others became unmoored and lost.
The bond believed she had rejected him. And when she screamed it—that wild, broken “I didn’t say no!”—it slammed back into place with such force that itechoedthrough his bones.
He could bear the ache. The slow erosion of self that came with her absence. But he had felt her pain, echoing through the bond like static in a wound. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Not without her firstchoosingit. It was a violation of form, and it terrified him.
So he stood at the window and tried not to want. Tried not to imagine the shape of her breath on the other side of his silence. Tried not to listen for her footsteps in the hall. Tried—
A knock on his apartment door rang through his thoughts. Once, then twice, a nervous cadence that made his wings twitch.
His heart leapt. He could not do this. He must do this. He was caught between choices and didn’t know how to trust himself.
But he opened the door anyway.
There she was, standing in the hallway, arms crossed tight against her chest like she was trying to hold herself together. Her eyes were puffy and red, like she had been crying silently and gave up all pretense halfway through. Her soft hair, sparrow-brown, had been pulled up to expose the long line of her neck.
She was so beautiful it stole the breath from his lungs. He ached, not just with longing, but with the memory of her pain echoing in the hollows of his bones. He hadn’t known what had happened, only that she had been hurting, and he had tried to reach out. And he hadn’t been able to help.
She rubbed a fist into one eye. “Hi, Sig,” she said in a very quiet voice.
“Nell,” he breathed.
She sniffed. Shrugged her shoulders and bowed her head.
“I’m sorry about what happened today.” Her voice cracked around the edges. “I got some news that threw me for a fucking loop, and that’s not your fault, but I did something stupid anyway and you got hurt.”
She paused, swallowed hard, and shifted on her feet like she wasn’t sure if she should step closer or run.
“I didn’t mean to do it,” she whispered. “But I know that doesn’t change it.”
She glanced up and locked her gaze somewhere around his collarbone, like eye contact might undo her completely.
“I just wanted to check that you were okay,” she said in the tiniest possible voice, laced with a tiny shudder, as if she was holding on to her control by the very tiniest of threads.
She didn’t look at him until he shifted slightly, his wings rustling faintly as he stepped aside, one arm extended in silent invitation.
She hesitated for only a breath, then slipped past him, close enough that her shoulder brushed the edge of his hand.
The apartment had changed since she had last visited. The lights were dimmer, warmer. In the far corner, a vine he didn’t recognize had bloomed with wide white flowers. It hadn’t been there an hour before.
Nell stood near the center of the room, hands fidgeting at her sides, trying not to wring them. Her shoulders were tense. Her posture was drawn tight. Grief clung to her like smoke.
He looked at her. The curve of her spine. The slope of her neck. The way she seemed to exist in two places at once—still inside her pain, yet already halfway out of it.
“Do you require tea?” he asked at last, more for something to do than anything else.
She let out a short, broken laugh. “Gods, no. I’m floating away on tea already.” She sniffed again. “Wine, maybe.” A halfhearted attempt at humor.
He churred. “You wish for wine?”
“No.” Her voice collapsed inward on itself. “No. I just…”
