Chapter 5 · The Screen

"Don't touch that." I got my body between Callum and the monitor before his hand hit the power switch.

He stopped an inch from my collarbone. Close enough I felt the heat coming off him through his tux jacket. Close enough the old mark under my collar gave one hard pulse, like it recognized him before I let myself.

"That's evidence, Callum. Not yours to kill."

"The ceremony's already twenty minutes behind schedule because of this." His jaw worked. Through the wall I could hear the string quartet tuning, chairs scraping, a woman laughing too loud. His wedding. Not mine. Never mine — he'd made sure of that in the glass chapel with three hundred witnesses, a rejection that should've killed the bond clean.

It didn't. The screen behind me proved it. Frame by frame, slowed down by the port board's forensic guy, my collar peeling back the second Callum said *mistake*, the mark flaring gold instead of dying like a rejected mark is supposed to.

"You want to know why it flared?" I didn't wait for him to answer. "Page four of the codex. A rejection has to name the mate by blood-claim, not just say the word. You said *mistake*. You never said my name. Legally that rejection never finished, Callum. Which means right now, on paper, I'm still your mate. You're twenty minutes from marrying Odessa while you're still bonded to me."

That landed. I watched it land — his face went the same white as the two-second loop on the screen behind me.

"Say that again."

"You heard me the first time."

"Then why the hell is Odessa's father not the one you're telling?" His voice dropped, rough at the edges. "I've had four lawyers in my ear since Tuesday and not one of them found that."

"Because I only ran the blood-claim clause an hour ago. And because if I hand this to the board before I hand it to you, they don't pause the merger, Callum, they void it. And you go to prison for signing a marriage contract on a false rejection."

He didn't answer that. He looked past my shoulder at the screen instead, at his own face going white right after the word left his mouth — the part nobody in the chapel had been close enough to catch. My hand found the remote out of instinct, thumb over pause. His hand came down over mine, not gripping, just resting, warm and too steady for a groom minutes from his own wedding.

"Rowan. I need that footage gone before her father sits down."

"That's not yours to erase. You made me the mistake on camera. I keep the copy — and now I've got the clause that says you never actually made me anything."

He stepped in anyway. Not fast. Slow enough I could've moved, could've slid along the console and put the door between us. I didn't. That's the part I'll hate myself for later. His hand landed flat on the console by my hip, caging me in without touching me, and the smell of him — cedar and starch and something under it that was just *him* — filled up the six inches of air I had left.

"The mark didn't fade," he said, quiet now. "And you're telling me it's because I never finished the job."

"That's what I'm telling you."

"Then finish it now. Say the word doesn't matter. Say you don't want me to say your name and this whole thing dies clean, and I marry her in twenty minutes and none of this ever gets filed."

My voice came out thinner than I wanted. "Is that what you want?"

"I asked you first."

His thumb found my jaw. Just that. One point of contact, rough-warm, tilting my face up half an inch, and I let him, God help me, I let him, because some traitor part of me had been waiting since the chapel floor for him to touch me again and mean it.

"I meant the port," he said. "I didn't mean you. I never got the rest of the sentence out."

"That's not an apology."

"It's not supposed to be." His mouth was close enough now I felt the word more than heard it. "Say my name back, Rowan. Finish what I started, or don't, but stop making me guess in an archive room twenty minutes before I'm supposed to marry someone else."

His other hand slid under my collar, right over the place where the gold still lived, skin on skin for the first time since the chapel, and it lit up like a struck match, heat rolling down my spine so fast my knees actually buckled against the console. I heard myself make a sound I didn't authorize. His fingers pressed harder, tracing the exact shape of the old bite-mark like he needed to check it was still there, and I grabbed the front of his jacket — to shove him back, I told myself, only my fist just held on instead, dragging him one inch closer, close enough that his mouth brushed the corner of mine, close enough that neither of us had said stay and neither of us had said stop —

The door went off its hinges.

Not opened. *Kicked.* Wood splintering, gold light from the hallway pouring in, and Odessa's father filled the frame with two of his enforcers behind him, tux gloves already off, face gone the color of raw meat.

"I've stalled your guests for twenty minutes," the man said, voice shaking with something worse than anger, "and I walk in on the groom's hand up his rejected mate's shirt."

Callum didn't let go of me. That's the part that mattered. His hand stayed flat over the mark, his body half in front of mine like he could block a room full of witnesses the way he couldn't block three hundred of them in a glass chapel, and when he finally spoke, it wasn't to Odessa's father at all.

"Rowan." His eyes didn't leave mine, gold-lit, wrecked, twenty minutes into a wedding that was already coming apart. "Take me back."