Chapter 606: What You Deserve vs. What You Want
Chapter 606: What You Deserve vs. What You Want
Her breath hitched. "And if Reyna isn’t enough?" The question came out barely above a whisper, laced with genuine fear. "What if the real me isn’t interesting enough to keep your attention? What if I’m boring without the performance?"
"She already is," I said simply, with absolute certainty. "She was enough the moment she challenged me in that training hall. She was enough when she showed me her garden. She was enough when she trusted me with her name." I pulled back just enough to make her meet my eyes again. "You’re enough, Reyna. All of you. Not the parts Veronica polished. The parts she couldn’t touch."
The kiss that followed tasted like bath water and something saltier. Tears, maybe. I didn’t mention them. Some things didn’t need words.
We stayed in the tub until the water turned cold and our fingers pruned. Then we dried off with towels that probably cost more than my first apartment and fell into her bed, tangled together beneath sheets that smelled like fabric softener and her perfume and sex.
The pendant burned against my chest. Constant. Unrelenting. A three hundred mile guilt trip I couldn’t escape.
Reyna noticed.
"Does it always do that?"
"Only when I’m in trouble."
"Are you in trouble now?"
"The worst kind."
She propped herself up on one elbow. Her hair fell across her face in damp crimson waves. Even without makeup, even exhausted and emotionally wrung out, she was gorgeous. The kind of gorgeous that made smart men stupid and stupid men dead.
"What happens when you go back?"
"Honestly? I have no idea. Natalia will either forgive me eventually or freeze everything below my waist. Possibly both, in that order." I stared at the ceiling. "The others will have opinions. Some will be loud. Some will be quiet. All of them will make me pay in their own ways."
"And you’re okay with that?"
"I chose this life. I chose them. And tonight, I chose you." I turned my head to meet her eyes. "I don’t regret it."
"Even knowing what it’ll cost?"
"Especially knowing. The things worth having always cost something."
She considered this. I watched her weigh my words against everything she knew about relationships, which was approximately nothing, and everything she knew about transactions, which was everything. The mental math played out across her features. Risk versus reward. Investment versus return.
"Teach me," she said finally.
"Teach you what?"
"How to be one of six. How to share without losing. How to love without competing." Her voice dropped to something barely above a whisper. "How to be someone worth loving back."
My chest hurt. Not from the pendant’s cold, but from something deeper. Something that felt suspiciously like the emotion I spent most of my life avoiding.
"You already are," I said. "But okay. First lesson."
"I’m listening."
"Stop thinking about what you deserve and start thinking about what you want. Deserve is a trap. It keeps you waiting for permission that never comes. Want is honest. Want doesn’t negotiate."
"What do I want?"
"Only you can answer that."
Her brow furrowed. She chewed her lower lip. For a long moment, the room held its breath.
"I want to feel like this again," she said. "Like I matter beyond my rankings. Like someone sees the real me and doesn’t run away." A pause. "I want to be one of your girls. Even if it means sharing. Even if it means Kuzmina tries to kill me. Even if it means everything I thought I wanted turns out to be wrong."
"Then you’re already winning."
"At what?"
"At being Reyna."
She collapsed against my chest with a soft, breathy exhale that held every ounce of her spent passion. Her weight pressed down on me—solid, real, and utterly trusting—in a way that felt less like burden and more like anchor. The kind of weight that grounds you to something true when everything else in your life is performance and calculation.
I wrapped my arms around her trembling form and held on. Not possessively. Not strategically. Just... held her.
Her skin was still flushed and damp with exertion, radiating a heat that contrasted sharply with the pendant’s arctic fury against my sternum. Her breathing came in ragged, uneven gasps that gradually slowed as her racing heartbeat settled against my ribs. I could feel the flutter of it, rapid and wild, like a trapped bird finally understanding it was safe to stop fighting.
One of her hands curled loosely against my collarbone. The other remained tangled in the sheets somewhere near my hip. Her hair—that vibrant crimson that had become as familiar to me as my own reflection—spilled across my shoulder and chest in a chaotic cascade that smelled faintly of sweat, vanilla, and the lingering traces of whatever expensive shampoo she used.
She shifted slightly, her thigh sliding between mine as she sought a more comfortable position. The movement was unconscious, instinctive, the kind of adjustment you only make when you’re too exhausted to maintain any pretense of control.
I tightened my hold just a fraction. Not enough to trap her. Just enough to remind her I wasn’t going anywhere.
The pendant continued its arctic pulse. Natalia’s fury translated into temperature, burning cold against my skin like a brand I’d chosen to wear. Tomorrow would bring consequences. The day after would bring more. My return to the island would involve conversations I didn’t want to have and punishments I probably deserved.
But tonight, I held a girl who’d never been held. Kissed a woman who’d never been kissed without cameras watching. Made love to someone who’d never been made love to at all.
That had to count for something.
Maki’s voice drifted through my consciousness, smug and knowing.
The cat spirit will require compensation for witnessing these proceedings through shadow space. Premium tuna. The expensive kind with the little bow on the can.
I ignored her.
Sleep came slowly, interrupted by the pendant’s relentless cold and Reyna’s occasional movements as she found more comfortable positions against my body. At some point, her leg hooked over mine and her hand splayed across my stomach and her breath evened into the deep rhythm of genuine rest.
I watched her sleep.
She looked younger without consciousness animating her features. The professional mask of La Sirena was completely gone. Even the genuine smile of the real Reyna had softened into something more innocent. She was just a girl. Twenty years old and carrying the weight of an empire she’d never asked for.
My phone buzzed on the nightstand.
I reached for it carefully, trying not to wake her. The screen showed three messages from Natalia, timestamped fifteen minutes apart.
11:47 PM: I felt everything.
11:52 PM: Every. Single. Thing.
12:07 AM: We will discuss this when you return. In detail. With visual aids.
No emoji. No punctuation beyond periods. No indication of whether "visual aids" meant a PowerPoint presentation of my sins or implements of torture.
Knowing Natalia, probably both.
I typed a response.
12:23 AM: I know. I’m sorry. I love you.
The reply came instantly.
12:23 AM: I know you do. That’s the only reason you’re still alive.
12:24 AM: Sleep well, my scumbag. Dream of ice.