Chapter 143: A Moment Torn Apart

The moment they stopped, the silence went, "oh this is gonna be awkward," and committed. Cherion sat there in the gloom, skin pebbled with gooseflesh that had nothing to do with the freezing draft snaking through the cave. He felt way too exposed, and not just because his shirt was currently... missing in action. He felt small. He felt like a loose thread someone had decided was too bothersome to weave into the pattern.

How do you just STOP?? We were in the middle of a life changing experience, hello??

Seriously. One minute, the world is a dizzying blur of heat and hunger, and the next, it’s like a bucket of slush has been dumped directly onto his soul. Cherion’s chest heaved, his lungs burning with the cold air, but the fire in his pride was far hotter. He stared at Zarius’s back, big, broad, and incredibly unhelpful, and felt irritation hit instantly.

He wasn’t about to just sit there acting like some rejected, freezing mess. Not happening.

Ignoring the way his knees knocked together, Cherion scrambled to his feet. The rough ground moved under his feet, rough enough to snap him back to reality.. He didn’t hesitate. He marched across the short distance, each step a declaration of war against Zarius’s "noble" withdrawal. When he reached the Duke, he didn’t wait for permission. He reached out and snatched Zarius’s cheek with a grip that was surprisingly firm.

He yanked the man’s face around, forcing those glowing red eyes to meet his own.

"Look at me," Cherion hissed. "You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to press me into the stone until I can’t remember my own name and then just... walk away because your conscience woke up late. What am I? A mistake? Some sort of child you need to protect from a little friction? Or was I the only one actually in that moment?"

Zarius’s jaw was like iron beneath Cherion’s palm, the rough stubble of his beard grazing skin. The Duke’s eyes weren’t just glowing, they looked way too focused for comfort. He looked like a man trying to hold back a landslide with nothing but his bare teeth.

"We stop now, Cherion," Zarius growled. The sound didn’t come from his throat; it felt like it rumbled up from the very bowels of the earth. "We stop because we have to. Before I forget who I am."

"Because you have to?" Cherion let out a sharp, bitter laugh that echoed around the cave. He leaned in, crowding the Duke’s space, oblivious to the fact that he was essentially cornering a predator twice his size. "Give me a better reason than that. I was right there with you. I am right there with you. Don’t treat me like I’m some fragile thing that doesn’t understand the physics of what we were doing."

The Duke’s calm finally broke. He surged forward, his hands slamming against the cave wall on either side of Cherion’s head with a crack that made the healer jump. He didn’t touch him, but the sudden cage of heat was suffocating.

"You want a reason?" Zarius roared, his voice a low-frequency thunder that rattled Cherion’s ribs. "My restraint isn’t because I lack desire, you fool. It’s because I have a terrifying excess of it! Do you have any idea what it means for a man like me to lose control? Do you even know what it means to be marked by me?"

Cherion flinched, his fingers finally slipping from Zarius’s face. Marking.

He knew the word. He’d read the tropes in those late-night novels back in his old life, the soul-binding, the permanent possession, the primal claim that changed the very chemistry of a person’s blood. But reading about it was a far cry from standing inches away from a man who sounded like he was ready to sink his teeth in and never let go.

"You... you want to mark me?" Cherion’s voice lost its edge, replaced by a dizzying, lightheaded shock. "But Your Grace... from what I know, that’s... that’s serious. It’s not just a make-out session. You do that with someone you love. Someone you want to be a mate with for the rest of your life. It’s... it’s a hell of a lot better than just stopping, but you can’t just throw that out there in a cave while we’re half-dead!"

Then, the Duke did something that wasn’t in any of Cherion’s mental scripts.

The tension seemed to bleed out of Zarius’s shoulders all at once, his massive frame sagging as if a tether had been cut. He didn’t move away. Instead, he leaned forward, dropping his heavy head until his forehead rested directly against the center of Cherion’s bare chest.

The moment they touched, it felt hot and overwhelming, his heartbeat going wild.

"I don’t know what this is," Zarius whispered. The vulnerability in his voice was a physical blow. "I’ve been feeling this... weird pull. It’s been there since the start, a constant, nagging itch in my soul that I don’t have a name for yet. It’s not just the biology, Cherion. It’s not just the pheromones. I’m intrigued by you in a way that goes beyond anything I’ve ever felt."

Zarius let out a low, uneven breath that brushed past Cherion’s skin. "Your heart... it’s going so fast."

Gently, with a hand that trembled despite its immense strength, Zarius took Cherion’s hand and pressed it flat against his own chest. Underneath the muscle, Zarius’s heart was an absolute riot. It wasn’t the controlled beat he’d expect, it was racing, just like his.

"Mine is doing the same," Zarius admitted, his voice low, almost felt more than heard against Cherion’s chest. He looked up, his eyes no longer terrifying, but searching. He tilted his head so their foreheads met, eye-to-eye in the gloom. "I want to know what this feeling is. I want to find out if you feel it too, not because we’re trapped, and not because of some biological fluke. I want to know when we’re safe. When everything fades and we can actually see each other for who we are."

For a long moment, the cave went quiet again, but something had changed. It felt full of something they couldn’t ignore. Cherion stared into those red eyes and, for the first time, saw him as more than just someone to deal with.

The "bubble" they were in felt unbreakable, a private universe where time had stopped.

Until reality decided to crash the party.

A flicker of orange light showed up on the cave ceiling, followed by the sharp smell of smoke. Then came the voices, faint at first, then suddenly loud enough to pierce through the silence.

"Zarius!"

"Lord Cherion! Are you there?"

The rescue party.

It came out of nowhere, completely ruining the mood. Cherion was jolted awake, his mind screaming at the sudden intrusion of the outside world. He blinked, dazed, as the shadows were chased away by the harsh, ugly glare of torches spilling into the cave mouth. Figures began to blur into the space, Marielle’s frantic silhouette, Elios’s sharp movements, and then Reiner.

Reiner was the first to reach them. He looked like he’d crawled through the very pits of hell, his cloak shredded and his face a mask of pale, raw agony. He surged forward, his hands reaching out as if to grab Cherion, but he stopped just short, his fingers hovering with a look of pure, unadulterated desperation.

"Lord Cherion? Oh god, Lord Cherion, are you alright?" Reiner’s voice was a wrecked, broken thing. "Tell me you’re okay. Talk to me, please."

But Cherion couldn’t talk. He couldn’t even breathe properly. He remained sitting there, shirtless and shivering, while a heavy fur cloak was draped over his shoulders by someone he didn’t know who. His mind was still trapped minutes in the past, back when the world was just the smell of pine and the thud of Zarius’s heart against his palm.

He looked at Reiner, but he didn’t see him. He saw a man who wanted to "find out" what they were to each other. He saw the Duke, who was already shifting back into his cold mask as he began barked-out orders to the guards, his eyes cold and focused once more.

Everything that followed, the blankets, the questions, the rush, felt distant, like he was watching it all from far away. Cherion stared blankly at a flickering torch, his brain refusing to process the fact that they were safe.

Someone should just slap me

, Cherion thought, his eyes unfocused as they led him away.

Please, someone just hit me so I can wake up from this.

But no one slapped him. They only treated him like a saint, unaware that his soul was still back in the dark, wondering if the heat he’d felt was real or just a trick of the ice.