Page 51 of Folds
“I’ll try to claim you,” he murmurs, leaning in a little closer. “I will stop trying to protect you from myself, stop trying to get you out of this town, and I will give in to the very loud, very persistent voice in my head that tells me you are supposed to be here, and you are supposed to be mine, and you are supposed to give me an heir.”
The intensity of his words sends bolts of sensation through me, and a needy gasp falls from my lips. I should be very, very concerned by how much those words turn me on.
“You were so close.” He sighs, and I feel his lips brush against mine as they move.
“It felt like dying,” finally saying it out loud makes me melt into him more. Rowan’s arms tighten around me in response.
“What did?”
“Leaving Drayring.” I clarify.
The tension between us is nearly unbearable.
“If you choose me, you won’t be able to leave. Not for more than maybe a week at most. Nowhere there aren’t significant hours of night. You’ll be more like the subjects you study than I think you’d care for.”
He delivers the sentence like it’s dirt on his grave. It’s a serious consideration, or it might be. Not for me.
“How long do I have to decide?”
“One year.”
It’s about three hundred and sixty-four days more than I expected. I hum to myself.
“And you want me?”
He pulls back as though I’ve slapped him.
“Desperately, irretrievably, completely.” He seems genuinely bewildered that I’d ask the question. But I need to be certain. “Auburn, I’ve been in love with you since the first time I saw you through the gate. I see home in your eyes.”
The reverence in his voice makes my stomach flutter.
I’ve been told my eyes are so deep of a brown they are more like the absence of light, like a pool of coffee, liquidnight. I’d always liked those descriptions, but I’ve never heard anyone say my features could be considered as transformative as being someone’s home.
“Then take me, Rowan, and make them roll back in my head.”
His expression fractures, and the night around us seems to fall in step, like the world itself is holding its breath.
The change is subtle at first. The shadows at the edge of the path surge forward with purpose, and the street lights seem to shrink back. Then darkness curls around his feet, and climbs the long line of his body as though pulled by a gravity that doesn’t belong to this world.
His eyes shift first. That pale green deepens, flooding at the edges until it seems almost bottomless.
“Auburn,” he warns again, but there’s no control left in it now.
Only hunger.
I pause. I should be thinking about Svalbard. About flights and research papers and a version of my life that made sense before tonight.
But I’m not.
Whatever this is, whatever he is, and whatever it will cost me, I know one thing with a clarity that feels almost raw.
I’m not leaving.
“I’m still here,” I whisper.
The darkness winds higher, threading through his hair and spilling over his shoulders. For a second, his outline blurs, something much larger and decidedly not human pressing against the shape of him like it’s trying to break through.
It should terrify me. Instead, it makes my pulse spike for an entirely different reason.
