Lahat ng Kabanata ng Bound To Ruin: Kabanata 31 - Kabanata 35

I found him in the den.Ruarc lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling like he was trying to read something in the cracks. There was no sound—not even the heavy rise and fall of breath that used to rattle the stone walls when his heat took hold. Just stillness. Stillness, and the shape of him—human, not half-shifted, not snarling.The den still smelled like him. Wild and warm. Like smoke that never cleared. The stone beneath my boots held a faint heat, like the room remembered what he’d been.I stayed in the doorway for a long time.The last time I’d been near him, he hadn’t let me get close. He’d begged me to leave, voice ragged with desperation and fury and fear. Not for himself. For me.He said he’d hurt me.Now he didn’t say anything at all.I stepped inside.He didn’t flinch. Didn’t growl. Just turned his head the slightest bit, enough to let me know he saw me. That it was safe.I crossed the room slowly and lowered myself onto the stone floor beside him, leaving inches between

I didn’t run.I just walked back to my chambers and closed the door.No one followed. They couldn’t.The prison had rules, and this was the only one it seemed willing to uphold for my sake: my chambers were mine. A boundary that couldn’t be crossed unless I gave permission.I didn’t give it.The lock clicked into place behind me, and the moment it did, the pressure in the walls withdrew. Like even the stone was relieved to be shut out. Like it knew what I was about to do and didn’t want to watch.I lit no lamps.I didn’t need to see myself fall apart.The herbs worked faster than I expected.The first night, the dreams were gone. No faces. No voices. No heat under my skin. I woke up cold and aching, but alone in my own mind.That felt like victory.So, I took more.Once at dusk. Once at waking. Ground into water or tucked under my tongue. Bitter as rot, but that only made it easier. I wanted to feel it. I wanted to punish whatever part of me still wanted them.The days stopped meaning

The first thing I noticed was the air.It wasn’t heavy, not yet—but it was thick in the way of storms. Expectant. The walls hummed. Not loud, not tangible, but I could feel it along the edge of my skin like a presence waiting to be named. It carried the scent of moss and ash and something feral underneath it all, something older than pain.Something was wrong.I felt it in the marrow of me before I let myself believe it. Before I said his name in my head. Before I let my feet turn toward the corridor he’d claimed.Ruarc.He’d gone quiet again. Too quiet. I hadn’t seen him since I returned—not fully. Just flashes of his scent in the hallway. The memory of a growl behind stone. The impression of someone pacing just beyond the threshold of control.He was hiding. Or caging himself.Again.I didn’t want to find him.But I couldn’t stop walking.His door was ajar.That was the first sign.The second was the heat.It rolled from the room like breath from a furnace—damp, cloying, tinged with