Chapter 356: Chapter 356: Fine, fine
"And why is that?" Kian asked, sounding exactly like a tired father already bracing for the storm his daughter was about to bring. His voice stayed low, but the weight in it pressed against Isabella’s back where it rested on his chest, a slow, steady drum of heat and heartbeat.
"Well, because I say so," Isabella shot back, light and shameless. The words came with a little smile, a tilt of her chin, the kind of playful glitter she used when she wanted to make a command sound like a joke.
Kian’s glare cut through it. One look—cool, blue, unblinking—and the smile slid off her mouth like honey off warm stone.
"Fine, fine," she muttered, clearing her throat as she shifted. She turned more into him until her knee brushed his thigh and her shoulder bumped his sternum, claiming space like it belonged to her. One hand came up and rested on his chest, palm spread across the thick muscle there. His body heat soaked into her fingers at once.
Her fingers—traitors with their own will—gave his chest a playful squeeze. Kian’s brow lifted the tiniest degree. Isabella arched a brow right back, mouth twitching. "What? They look good," she said, like she was evaluating fruit in the market. Then the humor slipped away, and her face set.
"Before I met you, Kian, this has been my life. So why should that change now?" she asked. The tone was honest; the words were not. She knew it. He didn’t. Or—she hoped he wouldn’t. She hoped he’d hear the independence and not the lie tucked underneath.
He studied her face for a long breath. He took it the way she needed him to take it: like truth. In his mind, she had been walking dangerous roads alone for years, surviving things he would rather burn than let near her. Did he believe she’d seen monsters? Maybe. He doubted it—the way she shone didn’t match the shadows he knew—but doubt didn’t matter. What mattered was the picture her words painted, and what it did to him.
"Because you’ve met me, Isabella. That will change," Kian said. Final. A wall placed gently in her path, but a wall all the same.
She gave a light, airy chuckle, the kind that meant absolutely nothing good for anyone standing in her way. If he knew her tells, he would have taken cover.
She held his gaze, the silence stretching like string pulled tight. She actually couldn’t believe he’d said it like that—like the world adjusted itself around his words and she was expected to follow.
"Oh, my dear Kian," she said, too sweet, too even. "You should be happy I’m doing this instead of questioning me." A hint of steel slid under the sugar. Air thinned.
The tilt in her voice was small, but Kian caught it. He watched her shoulders draw back a hair, chin lift a fraction. He’d seen this posture in warriors a breath before they pulled a blade; in Isabella it was different, but the fight was the same. She was about to get defensive—not only because she always did when pushed, but because her whole body had learned to stiffen whenever anyone reached for her reins.
If anyone was ever going to hold control, it would be her. She refused strings. She would not be a puppet; she would not end up like her mother, dancing to a tune she hated.
Kian’s eyes softened, then narrowed, trying to read what flashed behind hers. Apart from the fire, there was something else, something small and sharp: fear. He saw it in those sea-blue eyes—yes, a flicker—before she hid it.
Did he put that there? The thought slid into him and lodged like a thorn. Had his tone threatened when he only meant to anchor? Did he come off as a cage?
If he had, he was going to rip that idea out by the roots.
"I am grateful that you want to do this for me, Isabella," Kian said, each word set down with care, "but I can’t risk anything happening to you." No command. Only the truth, stripped bare.
She had a dozen comebacks lined up. No. Stop. Don’t tell me what to do. Try and stop me. They all rose to her tongue—and stopped there. What stilled them wasn’t the sentence. It was his eyes.
Vulnerability. On Kian.
It wasn’t dramatic. It was a quiet crack in the armor, a softening at the edges of that blue, like dawn prying apart night. It made the air between them different. Warmer, somehow. Honest.
Because of that, she let herself think instead of react.
Maybe not everyone who told her no was trying to control her. Maybe not everyone spoke like her father, cut like her brother, closed in like the men she had learned to dodge. Maybe—just maybe—Kian meant exactly what he said, and he said it because he was worried, not because he needed to stamp his name over hers.
Maybe not all men were the same. Just maybe.
Skie, what was she even saying. Of course most of them were the same. Kian was just... different. Exception clause. Special category. Do not copy.
A giggle slipped out at the ridiculousness of her own mind. She pressed her lips together to trap the rest, then failed and let the sound breathe. It rang soft against his chest and vanished into his heat.
She looked at his face and read it like weather. Jaw set. A muscle ticking there, low. His mouth a line, not cruel, only stubborn. His eyes stayed on her, unshy, unsmiling, a hundred feelings hidden down in the deep water where only she got to swim. The room narrowed to him. The steady weight of his arm pinning her lightly to his body. The clean scent of him—smoke, leather, sun on fur. The way his thumb had slid, unconsciously, to rest on the inside of her wrist. Not squeezing. Anchoring.
She needed to say something to loosen the tight knot the moment had pulled. A joke. A tease. A breath. Anything.
But one thing was certain, and the certainty rose through her like heat from a forge.
There was no way she was giving in.
She tilted her face higher, so close she could see the flecks of pale in his blue eyes, and the tiny scar at the ridge of his brow where a blade had kissed and failed. Her hand flattened over his heart, feeling the heavy, even beat. It didn’t race. Of course it didn’t. He was a storm held together by will. The pulse didn’t have to shout to be heard.
Her other hand—deliberate now—slid to his shoulder, fingers tucking into the seam of muscle and fur as if she were bracing herself on the edge of a cliff before taking a step that would change the map.
She wet her mouth, tasted the warm air, and lifted her chin a fraction more, refusing to look away, refusing to bend.
She would ease the tension—she had to—but she would not fold under it.
Not here. Not now. Not to him.