That tenderness was a lie.

Or perhaps, more frighteningly, it was the truth, and the ferocity that followed was Arik just as honest.

The first press of his lips was soft. Brief. Almost reverent.

Then Liam’s fingers tightened on his shoulders, and something in Arik broke open.

Arik’s tongue swept past the seam of Liam’s lips, stroking against them with a possessive, deliberate rhythm that made Liam’s knees buckle.

The hand on the railing moved to Liam’s lower back, pressing him forward until their bodies were flush from chest to thigh.

Liam could feel every hard plane of Arik’s body against his own, the solid wall of muscle, and the unmistakable ridge of his erection pressing firmly against Liam’s hip through the layers of their clothes.

A low sound, half groan, half growl, rumbled in Arik’s chest, a vibration Liam felt rather than heard, flowing from Arik’s mouth into his own and down his spine like a current.

Arik’s other hand left his jaw, fingers tangling in Liam’s long hair at the nape of his neck. He tilted Liam’s head to deepen the kiss, taking what he wanted with a raw, primal confidence that allowed no argument.

The scent of warm stone and caramel was overwhelming now, a heady, intoxicating perfume that filled Liam’s senses, drowning out everything else—the hum of the Vanguard, the pulse of the Gate, even the air he struggled to breathe.

All that existed was Arik’s mouth, his hands, the hard heat of his body, and the tension that was building deep inside Liam’s belly.

Liam’s own hands, which had been resting on Arik’s shoulders, tightened, fingers digging into the firm muscle as if to anchor himself against the tidal wave of sensations.

He was drowning in it, in the taste of Arik, in the feel of his tongue stroking and exploring, and in the faintly sweet taste of him.

Arik shifted, one muscular thigh sliding between Liam’s legs, pressing up against the sudden, aching hardness there. Liam gasped into Arik’s mouth, his hips bucking forward involuntarily, seeking more friction.

Arik broke the kiss, but only to trail his mouth along Liam’s jaw, his teeth scraping lightly against the sensitive skin.

Liam’s head dropped back, revealing the column of his throat, a silent invitation that Arik accepted with a soft, predatory sound. He bit down, not hard enough to break the skin but enough to mark.

Liam made a sound.

It was not graceful.

It wasn’t measured, clever, or shaped like any of the sharp little weapons he usually kept hidden behind his teeth. It slipped out of him raw and helpless, dragged from somewhere low in his chest when Arik’s mouth closed over the spot beneath his jaw and held there, teeth pressing just enough to make Liam’s whole body shudder.

Arik froze for half a breath.

Then his fingers tightened in Liam’s hair.

"Again," he whispered against his throat.

The word was ruined.

Not the voice of the Crown Prince of Agaron, who negotiated treaties like he was choosing where to place knives on a dinner table. It was darker than that and rougher, nearly stripped bare by restraint that had started to fray the moment Liam had risen onto his toes and kissed him as if he had the right.

As if he wanted the right.

Liam’s eyes fluttered open, unfocused on the high, shadowed ceiling of Lab V, where white ether crawled along the support ribs like captured lightning.

"You are," Liam said, breathless, fingers still gripping Arik’s shoulders, "extremely demanding for a man pretending to be controlled."

Arik laughed once against his skin.

The sound was low and dangerous and terribly pleased.

"I stopped pretending several minutes ago."

"That explains a lot."

"It explains very little," Arik murmured, and dragged his mouth lower, over the racing pulse in Liam’s throat. "I have been controlled while you were in heat."

Liam should have answered.

He had several possible answers, most of them insulting, one of them involving an unkind but accurate remark about Agaron princes and their dramatic suffering.

None of them survived Arik’s hand sliding more firmly over his lower back, holding him there with such absolute possession that Liam’s body betrayed him before his mind could catch up. His fingers flexed. His breath hitched. Heat poured through him too fast, too sharp, burning through the last thin layer of rational thought he had been clutching with both hands.

Arik lifted his head enough to look at him.

That was worse.

The kiss had been devastating, but Arik looking at him like that was obscene in a way touch could not be. His golden eyes were dark at the edges, bright at the center, focused on Liam with the concentration of a man studying a battlefield he had already decided to claim and protect until the world broke itself trying to reach it.

Liam swallowed.

Arik watched the movement.

Then smiled.

It was not kind.

Liam’s stomach tightened.

"You," Liam said, voice unsteady enough to irritate him, "are enjoying this far too much."

"I have dreamed," Arik said softly, "of you looking at me like this." He grazed his teeth closer to Liam’s scent gland at his nape. "Liam..." He inhaled the scent of a saint’s breath, sweet and gentle, and continued with his voice rasping and low.

"You are the mate I waited so long for."

The words should have sounded like a conquest.

They did not.

That was the problem.

Liam had braced himself for hunger, arrogance, and the ruthless certainty of a prince who had spent weeks staring at him, as if the rest of Wrohan were a temporary impediment between Arik and what he desired.

He had expected possession.

He had expected the heat in Arik’s voice to feel like pressure, a claim, or the kind of alpha confidence Liam had spent his entire life learning how to survive without bending beneath it.

Instead, the words struck him somewhere much worse.

Somewhere soft.

Somewhere he had not guarded because he had not known there was still anything left there to protect.

Mate.

Not an asset. Not an alliance. Not a temporary arrangement wrapped in diplomatic language.

Mate.

His throat worked.

Arik felt it.

Arik’s mouth hovered near the side of Liam’s neck, close enough for his breath to stir the fine hair there and close enough for Liam to feel the restraint as if a second body were pressed between them. His teeth had grazed near the scent gland, but he had not bitten there. That place would have made Liam’s knees fail for reasons neither of them could dress up as politics afterward was right under the alpha’s teeth, but like his tenderness in heat, nothing happened.

The restraint should have comforted him.

It did not.

It made him feel seen.

"You shouldn’t say things like that," Liam whispered.

Arik’s fingers tightened in his hair, not enough to hurt, just enough to remind him that the hand was there and that Arik was still holding himself back by force alone.

"I know."

"You say them anyway."

"I do hear myself."

Liam let out a breath that shook more than he wanted it to. "That is not an apology."

"No," Arik said, and his lips brushed the skin below Liam’s ear. "It is a warning."

Liam’s eyes fluttered shut.

His body betrayed him without shame. His fingers flexed against Arik’s shoulders, then slid higher, curving around the back of his neck as if he had any right to hold him there. As if Arik belonged within reach. As if the terrifying sentence had not opened something inside him and left him standing in the wreckage, furious and wanting and too warm beneath his skin.

"You waited?" Liam asked and hated how small the question sounded.

Arik went still.

"For longer than this life," Arik said.