Page 37 of Roar Me Like You Mean It
And she’s mine.
I rise, pocket the seal, and leave the study behind.
Her apartment feels different when I enter. The air is thick with the scent of her—coffee and soap, faint traces of ink from the pages she’s been devouring, and something wilder beneath it, something rising from her blood now that she’s awakened. The lights are low, lamps casting warm pools across scattered books and papers. She’s curled on the couch with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, her laptop still glowing with lines of text, her face set in stubborn concentration.
She doesn’t look up when I step inside, but I see her shoulders stiffen, the way her fingers pause on the keyboard. She knows it’s me before I speak.
“You didn’t lock your door again,” I say, voice low, the reprimand softened by something else I can’t quite name.
Her head lifts, and when her eyes meet mine, the fight in them is enough to make me want to smile. “Maybe I knew you’d be the one walking through it.”
I cross the room slowly, every step deliberate. The lion stirs in me, restless, as though it senses what I’ve already decided. I stand over her, looking down at the way she clutches her blanket like armor, and for once I don’t try to hold myself back.
“You’ve been digging,” I murmur, nodding toward the papers spread across the table.
Her chin lifts, defiant. “I found her. Morrigan Callahan. My blood isn’t clean, Malek. You knew, didn’t you? You knew I was more than just another prosecutor chasing shadows.”
I don’t answer. Not with words. Instead, I pull the seal from my pocket and hold it out between us.
Her brows knit, confusion flashing in her eyes, but she doesn’t speak. The coin glints in the lamplight, bronze darkened with age, the emblem etched into it faint but unbroken. My thumb brushes across it once before I offer it fully, my hand steady though my chest feels like it’s burning from the inside out.
“This is mine,” I say quietly. “It has never left me. Not once. Until now.”
She stares at it, then at me, her lips parting as though she’s about to argue. But instead she reaches out. Her fingers graze mine, warm, trembling slightly, before she closes her hand around the coin.
The bond snaps like a wire pulled taut. The air thickens, humming with something older than both of us, and the lion inside me growls, not in warning, but in recognition. Her breath catches, her body shivering as if she feels it too, and her eyes flick to mine with a sharpness that makes my chest ache.
She doesn’t ask what it means. She doesn’t hesitate. She accepts it without question.
I sink down onto the couch beside her, one hand lifting to cup her cheek, my thumb brushing across her skin. She leans into it without hesitation, her eyes closing for the briefest moment before she meets my gaze again.
“Malek,” she whispers, and my name on her lips feels like a vow.
“I tried to fight it,” I admit, my voice rough, the words dragged out of me like confession. “Every part of me told me this would ruin us both. But I can’t fight you. Not anymore.”
Her lips curve, not into a smile, but something softer, more dangerous. “Good. Because I wasn’t planning on letting you go.”
The laugh that escapes me is low, unsteady, but real. I press my forehead to hers, breathing her in, letting the bond settle into my bones. For centuries I’ve carried the weight of oaths, ofloyalty fractured and broken, of brothers lost to ambition and betrayal. But this—this is the first oath that feels like it was carved into me before I ever drew breath.
“You’re mine,” I murmur, the words a promise as much to myself as to her. “And nothing—not Roman, not the Pact, not even the gods who cursed us—will take you from me.”
Her fingers slip into my hair, pulling me closer, her lips brushing mine in a kiss that starts soft but burns hotter with every second. The blanket falls away, the laptop forgotten, the papers scattering as I pull her into my arms. The world narrows to the heat of her body pressed against mine, the taste of her breath, the sound of her heartbeat pounding in time with mine.
The bond thrums through every touch, every kiss, every word whispered in the dark. It’s not just desire. It’s recognition, two halves of something broken finally finding each other again.
When I finally pull back, her face is flushed, her eyes glowing with something that makes the lion in me purr with satisfaction. She’s fierce. She’s stubborn. She’s mine.
And at last, I don’t feel alone.
26
JENNIFER
The marble steps of the Capitol feel slick beneath my heels, polished too smooth by decades of men with more money than conscience walking them. The plaza hums with cameras, the low thrum of a dozen generators powering lights that cut through the gray afternoon. I can feel the air change as I take the podium. It’s not nerve, —it’s the current of attention, the collective breath of a crowd that wants to be told what to believe.
“Senator Alcott has failed this country,” I say into the microphone, my voice steady, sharp as glass. “He has funneled money through shell corporations tied directly to foreign arms deals, black market laboratories, and paramilitary groups that answer not to the American people but to a syndicate of criminals who have built their empire on blood.”
The reporters murmur, cameras flash, and I see Alcott standing at the edges of the crowd, his expression a mask of politeness stretched too tight across a skull built for cruelty. He’s older than the photographs let on, jowls heavy, his eyes pale and sharp.
