SERAPHINA’S POV
Leaving his apartment felt like walking away from gravity.
The hallway was quiet, too quiet, every step echoing in my ears as if the building itself knew something had shifted. My lips still tingled, my pulse still out of rhythm, my thoughts scattered in a way that made it hard to breathe evenly.
I should have been afraid.
Instead, I felt awake.
Outside, the city wrapped around me in familiar noise and movement, but everything looked different now. Sharper. Brighter. Like I had crossed a line that couldn’t be erased, only acknowledged.
I kept replaying the moment in my mind. The pause before the kiss. The restraint in his hands. The way he stopped not because he had to, but because he chose to.
That mattered more than the kiss itself.
Back at Aurora’s apartment, I
