Fenris's gaze cut to me instinctively, his voice ice-cold and absolute. "My mate and I share a perfectly content bond."
Kael was already too far away to hear the declaration.
But Aurora heard every word.
She nestled deeper against him, drunk and hazy, lifting her glistening eyes to meet his. Her voice came out small, fragile as morning frost. "Am I... intruding on your time with your mate?"
Before he could form an answer, her eyes reddened with unshed tears, and she struggled to pull herself from his arms. "You're not just my brother anymore—you have your own bonded now. I shouldn't be standing between you. I'll return to the guest lodge."
Fenris pulled her back into his embrace, holding her tighter than before, his arms wrapping around her like she was something precious that might shatter. His voice softened to something almost unbearably tender, a tone I had never once heard directed at me.
"You're right. I'm not just your brother anymore."
He paused, and the silence stretched like a held breath.
"But you're always welcome to intrude."
His gaze burned into her—raw, undisguised, his wolf barely contained beneath the surface—as if he might devour her whole right there under the stars.
In that moment, I knew with absolute certainty. He was one sentence away from crossing a line he could never uncross. One breath away from speaking words that would shatter whatever fragile pretense we had maintained.
I stood there like a complete outsider, a ghost haunting my own bonding, watching the scene unfold with detached clarity. My wolf whimpered somewhere deep inside, but I had long since learned to silence her.
Only then did he seem to remember I existed at all. He released Aurora, a flicker of guilt crossing his features like a passing cloud. "Sweetheart, you don't mind, do you? She's just my sister."
He'd already prepared himself—ready to soothe a jealous mate, to offer pretty words and empty reassurances.
But I only pulled my lips into the ghost of a smile, the expression feeling foreign on my face.
"I don't mind."
The moment those three words left my mouth, I heard it clearly—the sound of my own heart tearing open, the bond between us straining against wounds that would never heal.
When morning light crept through the stone windows, I woke and reached instinctively for the space beside me on the sleeping furs.
It was already cold.