Chapter Two: What the Fire Found

Ash didn’t step into the clearing right away.

He stood back, half-submerged in shadow, watching her like a wolf watches the tremble of a deer’s ribs—half from hunger, half from reverence.

She wasn’t running now.

She had run, of course. He’d tracked her through the brambles and broken branches, the dress torn, her breath ragged and wild in the trees. But something in her had stopped short of escape. Something in her wanted to be caught.

And he could feel it.

The way her need pulled at the air between them.

She stepped into the clearing as if crossing a threshold in her own mind.

Like she had surrendered something before ever seeing him again.

Her shoulders were bare now, the sleeve of her dress having slipped down in the chase. One of the straps hung useless, the fabric clinging to her curves like it, too, was desperate to remain close. Her thighs were smeared with dirt. A smear of red curved along the back of her calf where a thorn had kissed too deeply.

But she didn’t flinch.

She didn’t call out.

She just… dropped.

Onto her knees.

And bowed her head.

Ash’s throat tightened behind the mask.

She knew he was there. Even if she couldn’t see him—she knew.

He hadn’t made a sound, but she folded like prayer. Like offering. Like sin crawling back to the altar.

He took one step forward.

Then another.

The mask—stitched bone, fur, and leather—pressed against his face like it had grown from his own skin. The muzzle distorted his breath, made it sound deeper, rougher. Not human.

He didn’t speak at first.

He just watched her.

The girl who ran like prey but knelt like purpose.

The moonlight broke over her back, glinting on sweat, on dirt, on vulnerability so raw it was almost violence.

“Look at me,” Ash finally said, his voice low, sharpened by restraint.

She didn’t move.

Not out of disobedience. Out of something deeper.

Out of devotion, maybe. Or shame.

He came closer. Close enough to feel the warmth coming off her skin in waves. Close enough to hear the way she swallowed her own breathing.

“Do you know why you’re here?” he asked.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Then tell me.”

She didn’t lift her head.

“To be yours.”

The sound of it undid something in him.

Not the words—the way she said them.

Like truth. Like surrender that came from deep, hollow places that men never reached.

Like the kind of vow people made before being burned alive.

He knelt behind her, slow. Let the silence stretch until it trembled. He raised his hand and brushed gloved fingers along her spine, trailing the path from the nape of her neck to the base of her back.

Her body shuddered under his touch.

Ash gritted his teeth behind the mask.

She didn’t even flinch when he gripped a handful of her hair and tilted her head back. The arch of her throat, the soft whimper that slipped out—this was what he craved. Not just the body, not even the power. The knowing. That she trusted him enough to give him every part of her.

Even the broken ones.

Especially the broken ones.

“You ran,” he said.

“I know.”

“Why?”

She exhaled, lips parting, but the answer wasn’t quick.

“I wanted to know if you’d chase me.”

Ash’s grip on her hair tightened. Not out of anger. Out of ache.

She didn’t run from him.

She ran to find out if he needed her badly enough to follow.

He leaned in, the bone snout of the mask brushing the edge of her jaw. He could smell her—pine, sweat, the remnants of fear, and something hot and feral.

“You don’t run from me,” he said, each word a bruise in the air.

And then—just barely—she smiled.

“You’re the only thing I’d run to.”

He didn’t kiss her. Not yet.

He simply hovered behind her, letting her feel every inch of what she’d summoned.

He’d ruin her.

Not because she was weak.

But because she was strong enough to ask for it.