[Alaric]

The silence in the office wasn't empty; it was pressurized, vibrating with the static of twenty years of unsaid things. I stared down at her, my chest heaving, the scent of rain and night air—her scent—clinging to my lungs like a poison I didn't want the antidote for.

Ragnar was dead quiet now, a heavy weight in the back of my skull. He knew. He had always known.

"If it was so excruciating," I ground out, my voice cracking despite my best efforts to keep it steady. "If every touch ...