Chapter Five: The Space Between Us

Dara's POV

I didn't move from the doorway for a long time, my feet rooted to the spot like something in me was still deciding whether crossing that threshold meant surrender.

Chidi's hand found my elbow, steady, silent, giving me the choice of whether to step forward or turn around and walk straight back out. Kai stood just behind us, not pushing, though I could feel the tension radiating off him like heat off summer pavement.

"Elder Mackenzie." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "How does this actually work? The proximity — does it genuinely help, or is that just something people say to make themselves feel less useless?"

Mackenzie's eyes moved between me and the bed, calculating something I couldn't follow. "The bond isn't broken, Dara. Not truly, whatever it looks like from the outside. It's wounded. Proximity to you eases the wound temporarily — think of it as pressure on a bleeding cut. It won't heal him. But it slows the bleeding enough to matter."

"So I'm a bandage." My mouth twisted, bitter as unripe fruit. "That's what I'm useful for, then."

"You're here," Mackenzie said carefully, "because you chose to come, of your own will, against every reasonable instinct telling you not to. What that means beyond a bandage is entirely up to you to decide, not me."

I made myself step into the room, one foot and then the other, refusing to let my body betray how much that single step cost me.

Damien's eyes tracked my movement like he couldn't quite believe I was real, like some part of him still expected me to turn around and vanish back through the door before he could blink. I understood the impulse better than I wanted to. Some part of me wanted to disappear too.

"You don't have to come closer." His voice was rough, hoarse from screaming, and there was something in it I hadn't braced for — an apology buried beneath words that weren't technically an apology at all. "I know what I did to you. I'm not asking you to pretend otherwise, not for a second."

"Good." I stopped a few feet from the bed, close enough now to see the black veins clearly, mapping across his collarbone like ink bleeding slow through paper. "Because I wasn't planning on pretending anything for your benefit."

He almost smiled at that — a small, pained thing, gone as fast as it appeared, like a match struck and blown out in the same breath. "There's the Dara I remember."

"Don't." The word came out sharper than I intended. "Don't do that. Don't act like you still know me, like nothing's changed between us, like you didn't stand on that platform and—" My voice cracked, and I hated it, hated that even now he could find the exact place to press without even trying. "You don't get to be familiar with me anymore, Damien. You gave that right up yourself."

Something shifted in his expression — the ghost of a smile replaced by something rawer, more honest than anything he'd shown me since the ceremony. "You're right." Quiet, without a trace of argument in it. "I did give that up. I know that better than you think I do."

The silence that followed sat heavy between us, uncomfortable, thick with everything neither of us was willing to say out loud yet.

Mackenzie cleared her throat gently. "I'll leave the two of you to it, then. Kai, Chidi — a word outside, if you'd join me."

Chidi's grip on my arm tightened briefly before she let go, casting one last warning look toward Damien before following Kai and the elder out into the hallway. The door clicked shut, and then it was just the two of us, the space between us thick with everything that had gone unspoken since the ceremony ended.

"You look terrible," I said, because it was true, and because I needed something — anything — to say that wasn't *I hate that some part of me still cares whether you live or die.*

"I feel considerably worse than I look, if that's any comfort to you." He shifted against the headboard, wincing hard at the movement. "How's Chidi's cabin holding up? Still standing, or did the storm finally take the roof off?"

"Barely standing, on both counts." I crossed my arms, keeping the distance between us deliberate, a line I had no intention of letting him cross without a fight. "You're stalling, Damien."

"Maybe I am." His eyes found mine, steady despite the pain etched into every line of his face. "I don't know what to say to you that isn't going to sound like an excuse dressed up as an explanation. So maybe I'd rather talk about Chidi's roof a little longer."

"Try anyway." My voice came out harder than I meant it, but I didn't take it back, didn't soften it. "You owe me that much, at the very least. After everything."

He was quiet for a long moment, and when he finally spoke again, his voice had lost some of its careful composure, cracking open at the edges. "My mother came to me three days before the ceremony. Told me the elders had found something in the old records — a passage claiming the Adeyemi bloodline was tied to an old curse, something that would bring ruin down on any pack that bonded with it. I didn't believe her. Not at first, not fully."

"But you believed her eventually." The words tasted like acid climbing the back of my throat. "Enough to stand in front of the whole pack and reject me because of it."

"I was afraid." He said it plainly, no pride left in him to protect, nothing left to hide behind. "Not of you. Never once of you. I was afraid of what it would mean for the pack if she turned out to be right, and I let that fear make the decision for me instead of—" He stopped, swallowed hard, his throat working. "Instead of trusting everything I actually knew to be true about you."

"What did you actually know about me?" I asked quietly, and I hated how badly I wanted to hear the answer, hated the way my chest ached waiting for it.

His eyes held mine, steady, unflinching despite the pain visibly radiating through every part of him. "That you've never once given this pack a single reason to fear you. That you grew up defending pups twice your size on the training grounds because you couldn't stand watching anyone get hurt, not even strangers. That the last time I let myself feel something without measuring it first, weighing it, calculating its cost — it was for you. And it scared me more than any prophecy my mother ever quoted at me, more than anything else in my entire life."

The words landed somewhere soft and unguarded in my chest, and I hated it — hated how easily he could still find that place in me, even now, even after everything he'd done to bury it.

"That's a beautiful speech," I said, forcing my voice cold, forcing it flat. "Doesn't change a single thing about what you did to me."

"I know." He held my gaze without flinching away. "I'm not asking it to change anything, Dara. I'm just done lying to you, about any of it. Even if this ends up being the last thing I ever get to say to you honestly."

A tremor moved through him then, sudden and violent, and I watched the black veins pulse darker along his throat, watched his jaw clench hard against a pain that had nothing to do with our conversation and everything to do with the curse eating him alive from somewhere deep inside.

Before I could think better of it, before caution could catch up to instinct, I closed the distance between us and caught his hand in mine.

The effect was instant — a visible easing in the tension coiled through his whole body, the black veins along his wrist fading half a shade lighter the moment my skin met his.

Damien's eyes flew to mine, startled, something raw and unguarded breaking wide open across his face.

"Dara—"

"Don't read into this." My voice shook despite my best effort to steady it, to keep it flat and unaffected. "This isn't forgiveness. This isn't anything except me not wanting to watch someone die in front of me if I don't have to."

But even as I said it, I felt the old pull settling low in my chest — the same pull I used to feel as a girl, sneaking away to meet a boy who used to look at me like I mattered more than any pack politics ever could hope to.

I told myself it didn't mean anything.

I was getting better at lying to myself, apparently. I just wasn't sure yet how much longer I could keep the lie standing.