“About whatever this is.”
He doesn’t pretend not to understand.
“Be specific,” he says calmly.
“My body,” I reply, the words sounding absurd even to me. “My reactions. The way things feel different depending on who’s near me.”
He goes very still.
“I thought it was just heightened senses,” I continue, forcing myself to keep speaking before I lose momentum. “After being sick. But it isn’t. It’s too precise. Too…intentional.”
He doesn’t interrupt.
“When Kai gets close, it spikes. Sharp. Almost overwhelming.” I swallow, hating how exposed this makes me feel. “When Koa’s near, it steadies. And when you walk into a room?—”
I stop.
His eyes darken slightly. “When I walk into a room, princess?”
“It settles,” I say quietly even as my heart double beats at his use of a nickname for me. “Immediately. Yours is the strongest reaction of them all.”
Silence fills the space between us.
His jaw tightens, not in anger but in something closer to calculation.
“You were bitten,” he says at last.
The word lands heavy.
“Yes.” I wonder for a moment how he knows, but given that I’m his space and hardly trying to hide the mark, he must have seen it at some point.
“By an alpha.”
“I’m aware,” I reply dryly. “I was there. It was consensual, you know.”
His gaze flicks briefly to my neck before returning to my eyes. “It wasn’t superficial.”
“No,” I say, pulse quickening for a completely different reason now. “It wasn’t. I don’t really understand why it isn’t healing.”
He stands slowly, closing the space between us without touching me. The shift in proximity is subtle but immediate. The coiling tension in my chest unwinds another fraction.
I exhale before I can stop myself.
He notices.
“That wasn’t just adrenaline,” he says.
“Then what was it?”
He studies me for a long moment, as if weighing whether I’m ready for the answer.
“Your system’s been destabilised,” he says carefully.
“That’s vague.”
“Yes.”
I cross my arms. “Try again.”