Claimed By Silver

Chapter Six: Wanting the Thing That Marked Me

Freya’s POV

I wake up before the alarm, heart racing, sheets tangled around my legs, and it takes several long seconds to understand that I'm not still in the dream.

I don't remember all of it — dreams never let you keep the whole thing, just fragments, sensation without full narrative — but I remember enough. His hands, the ones that held my jaw steady while he cut into me, moving over my skin instead like an apology neither of us said out loud. I remember the weight of him over me, the low sound he made against my throat, the way my own voice broke on his name instead of a scream this time. I remember waking with my whole body still humming from it, wanting with an intensity that has no business surviving contact with daylight and doesn't seem to care that it should.

I lie there afterward, staring at the ceiling, furious with myself.

He carved a letter into my shoulder two nights ago. I still can't lift my arm past a certain point without the skin pulling tight around the mark, still can't look at it in the mirror without my stomach dropping through the floor. He did that to me. Took a blade to my skin like I was something he owned outright, no permission required, no explanation offered beyond I couldn't mark you the way I needed to — like violence was simply the smaller of two evils he'd decided to inflict on me either way, and I was supposed to be grateful for the smaller one.

And now I'm lying in bed wanting him again so badly it physically aches.

I don't understand it. That's the worst part, worse than the wanting itself — the fact that I can't locate the logic anywhere inside me. Every rational thought I own says run. Every rational thought says a man who marks you like property, who kills men for so much as looking at you, who vanishes through windows like smoke, is not a man you let anywhere near your body again. I know this. I could recite the argument in my sleep, apparently, and still wake up wanting his hands on me regardless, still feel my body respond to the memory of him like it's been waiting its whole life for exactly this and nothing else will do.

I go through the motions of getting ready for work without really being present for any of it. I burn the toast. I put my shirt on inside out and don't notice until Deja points it out at the coffee shop, laughing, and I laugh too, too loud, covering for the fact that my mind is somewhere else entirely — replaying the weight of him carrying me home, the particular way his voice cracked on my name in that alley like something in him actually feared losing me.

That shouldn't matter. A man capable of fear for me is not the same as a man who's safe for me. I know the difference. I've spent six years learning the difference between men who care and men who consume, and everything about Sterling should file cleanly under the second category — except it doesn't, not entirely, and that's exactly the problem. He consumes and protects in the same motion, and I don't have a category built for that, no filing system that survives contact with a man who'll kill for you and mark you in the same week.

"You're somewhere else today," Naomi says at lunch, watching me push food around a plate instead of eating it.

"Just tired."

"You've said that a lot lately." She studies me with the particular focus she reserves for moments she thinks I'm hiding something important, elbows on the table, chin propped on her hands like she's settling in for a real conversation whether I want one or not. "Is it the guy? The one from the bar?"

My whole body goes warm and guilty at once. "There's nothing going on with any guy."

"Freya."

"There isn't." The lie comes easier than it should, smoother than any of my other lies, because some small selfish part of me doesn't want to share this — doesn't want to explain the parts of it I can't explain to myself, let alone to her. "I just haven't been sleeping well."

"You keep saying that too." She reaches across the table, taps two fingers against my wrist, gentle. "You know you can tell me things, right? Even the stuff that doesn't make sense yet. Especially that stuff."

I almost do it. For one dizzying second I almost open my mouth and let all of it spill out — the alley, the men, Sterling's hands on my jaw, the knife, the mark I've been hiding under long sleeves for two days, the dream that woke me up wanting instead of afraid. I get as far as taking a breath before the whole idea collapses under its own weight. There's no version of that conversation that doesn't end with Naomi either not believing me or believing me and being in danger because of it. I don't know which outcome scares me more.

"I'm okay," I say instead. "I promise."

She lets it go, the way she always does, and I hate how relieved I am that she doesn't push harder. I don't know what I'd say if she did. I had a dream about the man who carved his initial into my shoulder, and instead of being horrified, I woke up wanting him again isn't a sentence I know how to say out loud to anyone, least of all myself.

By evening the wanting hasn't faded. If anything it's gotten worse, sharper, an itch under my skin that has nothing to do with the healing wound and everything to do with some part of me I don't recognize, some hunger that feels like it belongs to someone else entirely, borrowed from a version of me that doesn't know how to be afraid of the right things anymore.

I try to reason with it. I sit on my couch with the lights off and make myself list the reasons this is insane, out loud, like saying them will make them stick better than just thinking them.

He killed nine men. Maybe more, for all I actually know. He appeared out of nowhere with silver eyes that don't belong to anything human, told me I was his property before I'd even learned his name, and then confirmed it two nights ago with a blade instead of a conversation. He didn't ask permission. He didn't offer an explanation I could actually use. He just took what he wanted — a claim, a mark, a piece of my skin rearranged to say mine — and left before I could even fully process what had happened to me.

None of that should feel like anything except violation. I know that. I believe that, in the parts of my brain that still function on logic instead of whatever this is.

And yet.

And yet I remember his hands on my jaw in that alley, careful in a way that didn't match the violence he'd just done to three other men. I remember the spark that ran under my skin at his touch, electric and involuntary, like my body recognized something mine didn't have language for yet. I remember the sound of his heartbeat against my ear on the walk home, too slow for a man who'd just been fighting, steady in a way that felt less like danger and more like shelter, which makes no sense, which shouldn't be possible, and is true anyway.

I press my hand flat over the bandage at my shoulder, not quite touching the wound itself, just feeling the shape of it through the fabric. It should feel like an injury. Instead it feels like evidence of something I don't have the right words for — not quite belonging, not quite consent, some third thing sitting uncomfortably between the two that I don't know how to name and don't know how to want as little as I apparently do.

"This is insane," I say out loud, to an empty apartment, like the sound of my own voice will talk sense into whatever's happening beneath my ribs. "He's dangerous. He hurt you. You should never want to see him again."

The problem is I don't believe myself. Not even a little. Somewhere in the last three days, wanting Sterling stopped being a question I get to reason my way out of, and started being something closer to weather — arriving whether I consent to it or not, indifferent to every argument I try to make against it.

I call my mother, mostly out of habit, mostly because talking to someone who has no idea what's happening feels safer than talking to someone who might guess. She asks about work, about the spring show at the gallery, about whether I've been eating properly, and I answer everything on autopilot while some other part of my mind stays locked on an alley three nights ago, on silver eyes, on a voice that cracked on my name like it cost him something to say it.

"You sound distracted, sweetheart," she says, and there's real worry under it, the same careful worry that's coloured every conversation we've had about my life for six years now.

"I'm fine, Mom. Just a long week."

"You'd tell me if something was wrong."

"Of course," I lie, and hate myself a little for how easy it's gotten.

After we hang up I sit with the phone still warm in my hand and think about how much of my life has become a series of careful omissions — the men I don't mention because they're dead, the fear I don't mention because no one believes it, and now this, whatever this is, too strange and too shameful to hand to anyone who loves me. I've spent six years being alone with my grief. I didn't expect to spend the next stretch of my life being alone with a hunger I can't even justify to myself.

I think about the forum thread again, the phrase that's been sitting in my chest like a stone since the night I found it. Bonded ones don't get to choose who else gets close. I didn't understand it then. I'm starting to wonder, sitting alone in the dark with my hand over a wound that shouldn't feel like comfort, whether I'm not supposed to be able to choose him, either. Whether whatever this pull is has never actually been mine to reason my way out of, whether every argument I've made tonight against wanting him has been exactly as useless as arguing against gravity.

It's a frightening thought. It should be the most frightening thought I've had all week, more frightening than the alley, more frightening than the knife. Instead it settles into me almost like relief — like if none of this was ever a choice, then maybe I'm allowed to stop pretending I have the strength to fight it.

I don't like how much easier that makes everything feel. I don't trust how easily I could let myself believe it.

I don't sleep well again that night. When I finally do drift off, sometime near two, I don't dream about the men in the alley, or the knife, or any of the fear that should rightfully own my nights now.

I dream about him. His hands first, the way they felt against my jaw, patient in a way nothing else about him is. Then more — his weight, his mouth, the low sound he makes against my skin that isn't quite a word, my own voice breaking on his name the way it broke in that alley, except this time not from fear. I wake sometime before dawn with my heart slamming and my whole body alight, and for one unguarded moment, before consciousness fully arrives and brings the shame back with it, all I feel is want, clean and simple and entirely without apology.

Then I remember the knife. I remember the sound I made when it went in, the blood drying against my collarbone, the word mine sitting in my chest afterward like something I hadn't agreed to and couldn't put down.

I lie in the dark, wanting a man who marked me like property, hating myself a little for how much I want him anyway, and understand, finally, that reasoning my way out of this was never going to work.

I wake up wanting exactly what I told myself, hours earlier, I had no business wanting at all.