Chapter 42: No More Pretending

"Retrieval," Naya said again, the word refusing to sit still in her mind. "What does that even mean, Ronan?"

"I don’t know," he admitted.

"They wanted to take me somewhere. For eighteen years, someone was waiting for me to become an adult so they could—what? Collect me like property?"

"Nobody is taking you anywhere," Ronan said, steady despite the tension in his own jaw. "Not without your consent. Not while I’m standing beside you."

"My entire life has been people deciding things for me," Naya said. "My father. My mother. Even you, in the beginning."

"I know," Ronan said. "And I won’t be another person who does that to you."

Something in the certainty of his voice settled her, even as the fear still churned beneath the surface. She let out a slow breath, the tightness in her chest easing just slightly.

They returned to their private quarters not long after, leaving Darius to continue combing through the archive’s remaining records alone. Naya set the small bracelet down on the table between them, her eyes drifting back to it again and again despite herself.

"You don’t have to solve everything tonight," Ronan said, watching her.

"I don’t know how to stop thinking about it."

"Then don’t think about it alone," he said.

She looked at him differently then, something in his offer landing softer than she expected. Not a command. Not another attempt to manage her feelings for her. Simply an invitation to share the weight instead of carrying it by herself.

"Can I ask you something?" she said.

"Anything."

"That night in the vault. The kiss." She hesitated. "I’ve wondered ever since whether you regretted it."

"I didn’t."

"Then why did you kiss me?"

Ronan was quiet for a moment, clearly searching for an answer honest enough to satisfy the question. "Somewhere along the way," he said finally, "you stopped being someone I was protecting because you were my wife. You became someone I wanted close to me."

"When did that happen?"

"I don’t know," he admitted. "I wasn’t paying attention to the moment it changed. Only that it had."

"And what am I to you now?" Naya asked.

"That’s what I’m trying to figure out," Ronan said.

She wasn’t entirely satisfied with that, and she told him so. "You’ve been jealous. Possessive. Protective in ways that go far beyond duty. And you still won’t put a name to any of it."

"You haven’t exactly been clear either," Ronan pointed out.

"I was afraid," Naya admitted.

"Of what?"

"Of becoming another woman who loves you," she said quietly, "while you still belong to someone else emotionally."

Seraphine’s name didn’t need to be spoken aloud. It hung in the space between them regardless, the ghost that had shaped every cruel word he’d once thrown at her, every wall he’d built to keep her at arm’s length.

"I stopped comparing you to her a long time ago," Ronan said.

The words landed heavier than she expected, settling something in her chest that had been unsettled since the wedding itself.

The conversation quieted after that, the tension between them shifting into something gentler. Ronan reached for her hand, and she didn’t pull away.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"Yes."

His fingers brushed her cheek, and Naya closed the small remaining distance between them herself. The kiss that followed was gentle at first, nothing like the desperate, uncertain moment in the vault. This one they chose deliberately, with no fear or mystery driving it, only the two of them finally allowing themselves to want something without hesitation.

It deepened slowly, Naya’s fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt as Ronan pulled her closer, one hand settling at the small of her back. They broke apart briefly, foreheads resting together, both searching the other’s expression as though checking whether this was still what they wanted.

Neither of them pulled away.

Ronan’s lips found her jaw, then the curve of her neck, and Naya’s breath caught at the sensation, her fingers tightening in his shirt in response. When he tried to slow, to pull back just slightly, she was the one who drew him in again, surprising herself with how badly she wanted this, wanted him, not out of obligation or fear or the strange, tangled circumstances of their marriage.

Ronan seemed to register the shift too, something flickering in his eyes as he realized she wasn’t simply allowing this to happen. She was choosing it, actively, without hesitation.

The intensity built between them, warm and unhurried, both of them caught in something they’d spent months circling without either admitting it aloud.

Then Ronan pulled back.

Naya blinked, confused, her breath still uneven. "What’s wrong?"

"Nothing’s wrong," he said, though he put a small but deliberate distance between them anyway.

"Then why did you stop?"

"Because I don’t want our first real intimacy to happen while we’re frightened, or emotional, or trying to escape everything hanging over us right now."

"I wasn’t trying to escape anything," Naya said.

"I know," Ronan said. "That’s exactly why I stopped."

"Why?"

"Because if I start something with you," he said, holding her gaze steadily, "I want to know I’m choosing you. Not the moment."

Naya studied him, something in his restraint settling deeper than the passion that had come before it. It wasn’t rejection. It was the opposite, in a way, a promise that whatever came next between them would be built on something steadier than fear or adrenaline.

She was still absorbing that when a sharp knock sounded at the door.

Ronan straightened immediately, smoothing his expression back into something composed before crossing the room. Naya adjusted her own clothing, her pulse still not fully settled, and glanced at him as he opened the door to find Darius standing there, papers in hand and clearly reluctant to interrupt.

"This couldn’t wait until morning?" Ronan asked.

"I wouldn’t have come if it could," Darius said.

Naya and Ronan exchanged a brief look, the intimacy of moments earlier already dissolving under the weight of whatever Darius had found.

"What is it?" Ronan asked.

Darius stepped further into the room, laying a single page across the table beside the abandoned bracelet. "I found the original authorization order. The full document, not just the seal."

"And?"

"It wasn’t issued from the royal palace," Darius said.

Ronan’s brow furrowed. "Then where was it issued from?"

Darius met his eyes, his expression grim. "The Ripley territory."

The room went silent. Naya felt the floor tilt slightly beneath her, the implications settling in far heavier than the mystery itself had felt only minutes before.

Whoever had spent eighteen years searching for her, ordering her retrieval the moment she reached adulthood, hadn’t necessarily come from Ronan’s family at all.

They might have come from her own.