“Sleep.” The command was softer now. Rougher. “Tomorrow will demand everything we have.”
“And tonight?”
“Tonight, I hold you.” His arms tightened, pulling her flush against his body. “Tonight, I remember what peace feels like.”
She settled into him, let his warmth and the steady rhythm of his heartbeat become her anchor. The bond pulsed between them—quieter now, calmer, full of things that didn’t need saying.
Sleep was pulling at the edges of her consciousness when his voice rumbled through the darkness.
“Elsa.”
“Mm?”
His hand found her chin, tilting her face up until she had to open her eyes, had to see the cyan gaze burning into hers with something fierce and final.
“Run hard tomorrow.” The words landed like vows. “Run fast. Use everything that navigator brain of yours can devise. Make me hunt. Make me work.” His claws grazed her cheek with terrifying gentleness. “Make me earn you.”
The promise coiled between them, heavy with implication. Tomorrow, she would flee through snow under a crimson sky. Tomorrow, he would track her like the predator he was, hunt her like prey, catch her like—
Like a mate worth claiming.
“I will,” she whispered. “And when you catch me?”
His smile was all teeth and hunger and a darkness that should have terrified her.
“When I catch you,” he said, “you become mine. Luna. Queen. The center of everything I build from this night forward.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead—fierce and tender and everything contradictory about this male she’d somehow fallen for. “Now sleep. Tomorrow, we run.”
She closed her eyes. Let the fire’s warmth and his arms and the steady pulse of their bond carry her down into dreams.
Tomorrow, the Blood Moon would rise.
Tomorrow, she would run.
And when he caught her—
She would let him.
35
Sylas
Sylas woke with Elsa curled against his chest and the Blood Moon already pulling at his bones.
The sensation crept through him like frost spreading across fiber glass—subtle at first, then impossible to ignore. His instincts had been sharpening since midnight, honing themselves against the edges of his control. Now, with dawn’s pale light filtering through the chamber windows, he felt the beast inside him stir and stretch, testing its chains.
Tonight.
He didn’t move. Didn’t breathe too deeply. Elsa lay against him with her golden hair tangled across his arm, her breath slow and even, her heartbeat a steady rhythm that had become more necessary to him than his own. Through the bond, he sensed the soft blur of her dreams—warmth and movement and fragments of color that made no sense to his waking mind.
Let her rest. She would need every scrap of strength the day could give her.
Sylas tilted his head back against the furs and stared at the ceiling. The stone was ancient, carved with Lux Tear veins that pulsed in lazy patterns, their glow muted by the morning light. He’d been born in this fortress. Had taken his first steps in these halls, learned to hunt and fight and kill within its walls. Had watched his father lose himself to the madness of corrupted Moon Tears and had put him down like the feral beast he’d become.
This place was his. Every stone, every shadow, every bitter memory etched into its bones.
And tonight, he would hunt through it like a predator, tracking the human female who had somehow become the center of everything.
Elsa shifted in her sleep, pressing closer. Her hand found the thick fur of his chest and curled there, unconscious and trusting. The gesture sent something sharp through him—a crack in the careful control he’d spent a lifetime building.