Let Him Watch

Ciaran’s POV

She was lying exactly where he'd left her — bare feet tucked beneath her, chest rising in slow, steady breaths, curled like a poem on the dark-furred rug of the abandoned cabin. The fire had long since gone to embers, casting flickers of red across her skin.

Ciaran sat in the wooden chair by the hearth, elbows resting on his knees, studying her. There was something dangerous in the peace she wore. Like the stillness of a pond before a body dropped in. He knew what lay beneath that stillness — longing, power, hunger, and shadows, just waiting to be called.

His shadows.

His mate.

Therrin stirred slightly, the curve of her lips parting. A sigh, then a whisper — his name. Not the one others called him. Not the title whispered in fear.

The one only she would speak. "Ciaran…"

He rose without a sound, the floor groaning gently beneath his bare feet. With a single thought, the shadows curled around him like a cloak, whispering in his ear. They had missed her too. Even now, they flicked toward her as if hungry, dancing over the worn wood with silent glee.

She blinked awake just as he knelt beside her. Her dark lashes lifted slowly, and her gaze met his — sleepy, molten, confused… then knowing.

"I had a dream," she murmured.

"I know," he replied. "I gave it to you."

Therrin sat up, her hair tumbling over her shoulder. She should've pulled away. Should've curled into herself like she used to.

But she didn't.

Instead, her gaze dropped to his bare chest. "Why am I not afraid of you anymore?"

"Because your soul remembers what your mind still denies," Ciaran said gently, brushing a strand of hair from her cheek. "You were never meant to fear me."

She shivered. Not from cold.

"Come," he said, rising and holding out a hand. Shadows licked at his fingers like smoke. "I want to show you something."

She hesitated… then slid her hand into his. And the shadows reached for her too — wrapping around their fingers like silk.

The place was hidden — a hollow beneath a canopy of willows, their long branches brushing the mossy earth like curtains. A trickling stream wound through the hollow, catching the silver of the moonlight like veins of starlight.

"This was your mother's sanctuary once," Ciaran said as she stared. "Before she gave it up to protect you."

Therrin turned to him. "You knew her?"

"I knew all the queens of shadow. But none like you." His voice dipped. "None who bled light as much as they drank darkness."

She didn't answer. Her eyes were on the shadows that twined through the willows — shadows that moved not with the breeze, but toward her. As if summoned. As if recognizing one of their own.

"They hear me," she whispered.

"They always have," he said.

"But now I… understand them."

"Yes," Ciaran said. "They are your language. And you — their voice."

She stepped forward slowly, brushing her fingers through the dark mist that drifted at her side. And this time, when it whispered, she whispered back.

He could feel the shift deep in his bones.

She was waking up.

And he was going to give her reason to never fall asleep again.

The moment snapped when her breath caught. The shadows curled around her legs, slid over the skin of her thighs like silk, dragging heat in their wake. She turned sharply to him, eyes wide. Not in fear.

In anticipation.

"You're doing that," she said softly.

Ciaran gave a slow smile. "I said I wanted to show you what you could do."

He stepped forward, his hand reaching out, fingers ghosting along her cheek. The shadows followed — gentle but insistent, trailing behind his touch like worshippers.

"I'm not stopping you," she said, surprising them both.

"You should," he murmured, voice dropping. "I'm not kind like Dion."

Her jaw tensed. But she didn't move. "I don't want kind right now."

Ciaran's breath hissed in softly.

The shadows swelled.

With a single command, they slid behind her, lifting her hair, caressing the column of her throat, drawing a trembling breath from her lips. He stepped closer, and now there was no space between them.

Just shadows.

And heat.

And the bond that pulsed louder with every heartbeat.

And then he called him.

A silent tug, sharp as a knife. Across the threads of the bond that Dion shared with Therrin — the one Ciaran had bound himself to just days ago with the mistress's help.

The boy would feel it. And come.

He had no choice.

Ciaran never looked away from Therrin. But his power reached beyond the veil, found Dion — and yanked.

Dion stumbled into the clearing moments later.

Eyes wild. Chest heaving. And frozen.

Ciaran had locked him in place — a silent, vicious spell that coiled around his body like chainmail. He couldn't speak. Couldn't move.

But he could see.

Everything.

Ciaran smirked at the rustle in the trees and let his voice rise.

"She's learning so quickly, don't you think?" he asked the air, hands trailing down Therrin's arms, making her shiver. "So eager. So ready. And you never touched her like this, did you?"

Dion strained against the hold, muscles taut and trembling, rage and panic bleeding from him like poison.

Therrin hadn't noticed.

Couldn't hear him.

Wouldn't feel him.

Ciaran had made sure of it.

"Touch me," she whispered — and it wasn't to Dion.

It was to him.

Ciaran didn't hesitate.

The shadows obeyed, slipping beneath the folds of her tunic, trailing across her stomach, her back, her spine. She gasped. Clutched at his arms. But she didn't pull away.

She arched into it.

Embraced it.

Dion's scream of fury was silent.

But Ciaran heard it all the same.

"I warned you," Ciaran murmured, mouth at her neck. "You had her heart, and you wasted it. I'll take what you threw away."

He turned her to face the trees, the place where Dion stood hidden but bound, and pressed his mouth to her shoulder, his hands guiding the shadows as they whispered against her thighs.

She moaned.

And Dion crumbled.

It was a cruel kind of theater, one Ciaran reveled in.

But it wasn't just about vengeance.

It was about claiming what was his.

Therrin trembled against him now, panting, her eyes glazed with shadow and power and something else.

Desire.

Her hands grasped his tunic, anchoring herself to him as the shadows swirled between them, around them, through them.

"You were made for this," he said into her hair. "For me. For the dark."

"Then take me there," she breathed.

And he would.

But not yet.

First — he'd let Dion watch a little longer.

Let him feel the weight of every touch.

Let him remember that the bond wasn't his anymore.

It was shared.

And in that sharing… he was losing.

Fast.