MY SAVING DOOM

FORBIDDEN WORTH

The night air cooled my flushed cheeks, but the burn in my wrist never faded.

“You’re trouble,” I laughed nervously, shoving Ethan’s chest when he leaned in too close.

“The best kind of trouble,” he teased, eyes dancing.

I rolled mine, backing away. “Goodnight, Ethan.”

“That’s not a no to tomorrow,” he said, grinning like a wolf.

I forced a smile. “We’ll see. Second date, maybe.”

“Maybe?” He clutched his chest in mock agony. “You’ve already made my week.”

I shook my head, laughing despite myself, before finally turning toward home. Every step away from him made the mark on my wrist throb harder, hotter — like punishment.

By the time I slipped inside my apartment, my chest was tight with confusion. I pressed my back against the door and sighed. “What am I even doing?”

“You’re making a mistake.”

The voice froze me mid-breath.

Low. Cold. Familiar.

My head whipped toward my bedroom. My heart dropped.

Damian was sitting on the edge of my bed, leaning back casually, one arm braced against his knee like he’d been waiting all night. His storm-colored eyes glowed faintly in the shadows, and the curve of his mouth was sharp, cruel, beautiful.

My pulse skittered. “You—” My voice cracked. “What the hell are you doing here?”

He tilted his head, almost bored. “Better question—what were you doing out there? With him?”

My throat went dry. “You were watching me?”

He laughed, soft and humorless. “I didn’t need to. The mark told me enough.” His gaze dropped to my wrist. “I felt every second of your little… game.”

Anger flared hot in my chest. I yanked my sleeve up, shoving the glow at him. “This doesn’t give you the right to stalk me. You don’t own me, Damian.”

He leaned forward slowly, his eyes locking onto mine, voice low and dangerous. “Don’t I?”

Fury boiled over. I shoved him hard, but he barely moved, his body solid as stone. “You don’t get to come here, sit on my bed like you own the place, and interrogate me! You don’t get to ruin my life and then explode when I try to live it.”

His eyes narrowed, storms brewing in their depths. “Live it? With him? You think Ethan can handle you? He doesn’t even know what you are now. He’d crumble if he ever saw the truth.”

My voice cracked as I snapped back, “And you can?”

Silence fell. His jaw tightened. His gaze burned into me, sharp and possessive, as though my very question insulted him.

Finally, his lips curved into a dangerous smirk. “The only reason I didn’t drag you out of that bar myself… was because I couldn’t. There was another being there. Higher than me.”

The words landed like a blow. My stomach flipped, fear curling through me. “Higher… than you?”

His smirk faded, replaced by something darker, heavier. “Don’t play dumb, Nanya. You think I’m the worst thing out there? You’ve barely scratched the surface.”

My chest ached, fury and terror colliding. “Then why the hell are you here, Damian? If I’m such a curse, if I’m doomed anyway, why not just leave me alone?”

He leaned back again, sitting casually as if he hadn’t just shattered my world with a single sentence. His eyes pinned me in place. “Because you’re mine, whether you accept it or not.”

My hand trembled at my side. I hated him. I wanted him. I wanted to scream, to cry, to throw him out—anything to quiet the storm he left inside me.

But the mark pulsed, hot and hungry, betraying me with every beat of my heart.

I shouldn’t have pushed him. I knew that the moment my palm hit his chest — because he didn’t budge. He only blinked, the faintest smile pulling at one corner of his mouth as if my little shove amused him.

“You’re so loud when you don’t want to admit you’re wrecked,” he said, voice calm enough to make my skin crawl.

“Get up,” I snapped. “Leave. Go back to whatever realm you crawled out of. Don’t sit on my bed and act like you own my life.”

He rose then, but slowly, deliberately, like he was deciding whether to be kind or cruel. And because he moved with that impossible patience, my anger slipped into something more dangerous — a tremor of something I couldn’t call by name.

He closed the distance between us in two strides. My breath hitched; the room seemed to shrink. He reached for my wrist, not to hurt but to pin me — and the contact set the mark burning so fiercely I nearly cried out.

“Im not yours,” I spat, voice raw.

“You think words change the way the world is?” His fingers tightened around my wrist. For a second his hold was harsh, and the pain high and clear. The shame of it — that tiny panic that I liked pain from him — made my face heat.

“Let go!” I yanked, and this time he stumbled, just a hair’s breadth, like a god surprised to be checked.

He didn’t release me. Instead, his hand slid up from my wrist, light as a warning, to cup my cheek. His thumb grazed my skin. Everything in me — in my bones — wanted to melt into that touch. Everything I’d learned, everything I’d sworn, surged the other way.

“I couldn’t come for you,” he said, the sentence fragile now, strange against the fierceness of his eyes. “Not in there. There was someone — he was watching. Higher than me. He doesn’t like breaches.”

Heat and fury and panic collided in my chest. “So you spy? You sit in my home and watch me to make sure I don’t embarrass you in front of some cosmic hall monitor?”

“No.” His voice went low, private. He tipped his head, and for the first time I saw something that wasn’t cruelty: fatigue. “I watch because I know you. I watch because when you smile, the world rights itself for a second. I watch because if something went wrong, I would…”

His words cracked off like a knife stuck in glass. He swallowed, jaw working. “I would have had to lose more than you. I couldn’t risk that.”

The anger that had lived hot and loud in me for the last hour thinned into ice. “Lose more than me? Like what — your place? Your power? Your… gods?”

His mouth was a line. When he spoke again, he did it as if he was confessing a sin. “Yes. All of it. Everything I am.”

The apartment spun. The image of him — casual on my bed, the god who had saved me and damned me in the same breath — was suddenly unbearable. I shoved him away with everything I had left. He stumbled, then steadied himself like nothing had happened, like I’d flicked a leaf.

“You keep saying I’m doomed,” I said, the words a knife. “You keep saying I’ll die because of you. Is this your penance? To watch me fall apart while you keep your throne?”

He laughed once — no humor in it. “Penance,” he repeated. “Perhaps. Or maybe it’s my punishment for wanting what I was forbidden.”

I stepped forward until we were chest to chest, and he didn’t move. His presence pressed into me — heavy, inevitable. “Then why stay?” I whispered. “If loving me costs you everything, why the hell would you risk it?”

His eyes were impossibly tired. For the first time, he looked like a man who’d been worn thin by centuries of rule and regret. “Because,” he said, breath warm against my mouth, “for the first time in a very long time, something feels worth losing it for.”

My head spun. My fists unclenched. The world narrowed to the tiny space between his lips and mine. I could close that distance with a single movement. I could kiss him, let the world fall. I could press into him and forget the mark and the doom and the gods because for one insane, bright moment — nothing else would exist.

He lowered his face.

I wanted to hate him enough to push him down the stairs.

I wanted to kiss him enough to hand him my whole life.

We were an inch apart when the front door rattled like someone slammed a fist against it, a sound so sudden and violent it knocked us both back like an electric current.

We froze.

He looked at the door.

My blood turned to ice.

Someone was on the other side. They didn’t sound human.

Damian’s jaw tightened. The casual mask fell away and in its place sat a hard, feral readiness I’d only ever seen once — in the first moment he saved me.

“Is this what you really want?,” a voice said from the hall — low, amused, and wrapped in power. It wasn’t a voice I recognized; it felt like thunder under velvet.

Damian’s hand went to mine. Not possessive. Protective. His grip was suddenly all that kept me anchored.

“Don’t,” he breathed, so soft I barely heard it. “Not here.”

My heart thudded like a drumbeat. The mark on my wrist ignited, hotter than it had ever been

. The room seemed to tilt. Something moved in the shadows outside the open door.

And everything I had been running from — gods, rules, sacrifices — stepped back into my life with a whisper.