Aurora's POV
BGM: Run (Beautiful thing) by AWOLNATION
The woods swallowed us almost the moment we crossed the treeline.
Branches locked together overhead, stitching the moon out of existence until the dark grew dense enough to press against my ribs.
I glanced back once. The path had already vanished — taken by creeping undergrowth, as though the forest had no intention of letting either of us walk out the same way we came in.
He moved first — quiet, composed, the darkness moulding itself around him with unnerving familiarity.
My steps landed wrong by comparison, each one a reminder that this place accepted him and merely tolerated me.
Fear skimmed up my spine, quiet but insistent, yet fear felt like a luxury now. Something reserved for people who hadn't already lost control of the story.
Roman didn't speak. He hadn't needed to. Every glance he threw over his shoulder held more than words — a warning threaded with a dare, the quiet insistence that I was the one who asked for this, so I'd better keep pace.
He cut into the dark, purposeful as a blade, and I followed him. Because the only thing worse than what waited ahead would be someone else reaching it before I could.
The ground softened beneath me, soil giving way like something had been unsettled just moments before.
Roman slowed — barely, but enough.
Of course he noticed. He always does.
His attention scanned the treeline in controlled, predatory sweeps, that kind of hyper-awareness people don't inherit; they're trained into it, sharpened by whatever they refuse to talk about.
"You're shaking," he murmured, eyes fixed ahead.
I wasn't. Not in a way you could see.
But Roman picks up fear like scent, like heat, like something he was built to track.
"I'm fine," I said, barely convincing myself.
"Lies," he replied. "You don't even hide them well tonight."
Heat pricked behind my eyes, a tightening born of frustration and a humiliation I didn't want him to see.
I meant to bite out a retort, something sharp enough to mask it, but the question choking my breath tore its way out instead.
"What if this is a trap?"
He finally turned, halting just inches from where I stood.
Moonlight loosened from the canopy and scraped across his face, outlining the controlled precision of every feature.
His grey-green eyes — cool, shadowed, impossible to parse — held mine with a force that grounded me and splintered me at the same time.
"It is a trap," he said.
The certainty in his tone hit harder than the words themselves.
"And you still walk into it?" My voice scraped up barely intact.
His expression remained unchanged — except for the faint, lethal narrowing of his gaze.
"You want answers more than protection."
Another pause, edged and deliberate.
"And I want to see the idiot who thinks he can stalk me."
Cold rippled through me, followed by something that wasn't fear but behaved like it — alive, coiling for release.
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Bound To Be Yours 🦌
Teen FictionAdrian Sinclair isn't just St. Augustine's golden boy. He's my curse-𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓶𝔂 𝓯𝓲𝓻𝓼𝓽 𝓸𝓫𝓼𝓮𝓼𝓼𝓲𝓸𝓷. He says I saved him. He never realised I was the one who pulled him under. St. Augustine's is a cage made of gold. Everyone here is starv...
