Page 89 of Phoenix's Last Heist
I lick my lips, still raw from days of dehydration. My nerves tangle in my gut.
“So, um, you said I was your mate.”Smooth, Lyra. Real smooth.
There’s a long pause as the silence thickens between us.
“I did,” he says finally. His voice is calm. Controlled. Too careful.
“Were you serious?”
His eyes meet mine—vibrantly green, burning even in the low light. He swallows, his throat working nervously.
“That’s not the kind of thing I’d joke about.”
My heart thuds once, hard enough to make me dizzy.
I take a breath. Then another. “What…what does that mean to you? Having a mate?”
He hesitates, like he’s not sure how honest he should be.
“Tell me,” I say, softer this time. “Please.”
He exhales and crosses the room slowly, not touching me, but sinking onto the bench across from mine. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, fingers laced.
“Xylothian matehood isn’t destiny,” he says. “Not like it is for some species. It’s biological. Instinctual. A kind of recognition. Our bodies know. Our instincts know. It’s not always about love. But…sometimes it is.”
His gaze lifts to mine.
“With you, it is.”
I want to look away, but I don’t. Because itmeanssomething. And that terrifies me.
“I didn’t choose it,” he continues. “But I’d choose you a thousand times over. Being my mate means you’re the one for me—the only one. You’re the one my body recognizes, the one I crave, the one I would die for. It means…you’re already inside me, etched into my bones. And I will never want another.”
My throat tightens.
He says it like it’s the clearest truth in the world. There’s no pleading, no pressure. Just reverence.
“I know it’s not fair,” he says with a small shake of his head. The green shimmer of his hair catches the low light of the cabin, a woodland rainbow. “I know you didn’t ask for this. I’m not asking you for anything. I just…need you to know.”
“And if I say I don’t want it?” I whisper.
“I’ll walk away,” he says instantly. “If that’s what you want. I’ll never force a bond on you. I’d rather die than cage you.” Eyes flashing, he adds, with heart-wrenching determination, “I’d never ask you for your tether.”
Something in my chest splinters, and suddenly the space between us feels much too big. Maybe that’s what I’ve been chasing all along—not freedom, not fortune. Just the right to be wanted for who I am, not what I can give.
“You’re not caging me,” I whisper.
He blinks.
“You never were. Well…except for that time when you tied me to your cot and threatened to turn me over to the Feds,” I add, awkwardly.
A slow grin tugs at his mouth, and for a moment, I can breathe again.
Andstars, the flash of those even white teeth and infuriating dimples—it takes nothing else for the heat to bloom between my thighs. My body hums with a pulse of want I can’t suppress. And I see the moment he senses it, the way his nostrils flare slightly and his jaw tenses.
“Lyra,” he murmurs, voice low, warning.
“It’s not myvellia,” I say quickly.
