"I’m not that delusional."
Sebastian’s lips parted.
Nero gave him the faintest smile.
"Possessive, yes. Unreasonable, apparently. Delusional? I do have standards."
"Nero."
Another button came free.
Sebastian’s breathing had changed.
His eyes were fixed on Nero’s hands, then his chest, then his face as though all three belonged to something he recognized and could not understand.
Nero’s amusement faded slightly.
"Sebastian?"
No answer.
Nero could see him standing there.
He could see blood on his face, anger still drawn tight through his jaw, one hand pressed against injured ribs.
But Sebastian was looking through him now.
Nero had seen that before when Sebastian had the visions.
The realization should have made him stop.
Instead, terror rose beneath his ribs.
Because Sebastian was somewhere else while standing directly in front of him, and Nero had no idea what he was seeing.
He did not know whether it was another life.
A death.
A version of them Nero had never lived and Sebastian had spent years running from.
All Nero knew was that Sebastian had left him once already tonight, and now even his eyes were going somewhere Nero could not follow.
"Sebastian."
Nothing.
Nero pushed himself slightly straighter despite the pain in his knees.
He wanted to reach for him.
He did not.
Sebastian had told him not to.
For perhaps the first time that night, Nero obeyed.
He stayed kneeling in the middle of the damaged highway instead, blood drying along his temple while smoke drifted around them from the wrecked cars.
His voice came quieter.
"What more do you want from me, just to stay?"
Sebastian’s expression broke.
Tears filled his eyes so suddenly that Nero’s chest tightened.
He had no idea why. No idea what Sebastian was seeing when he looked at him.
Nero only knew what he wanted.
He wanted Sebastian here tomorrow.
And the day after that.
Angry, furious, unwilling to touch him if necessary.
He wanted the chance to repair what he had broken instead of returning to a life where Sebastian existed somewhere beyond his reach.
Nero swallowed.
His eyes burned.
"Don’t you believe you already have my heart in your hands?"
A tear slipped down Sebastian’s face.
Nero went still.
Sebastian looked at him with naked horror.
Nero remained on his knees in the middle of the highway, one hand resting against the open collar of his shirt, white-blond hair hanging loose around his face where the crash had torn most of it from its fastening. Blood ran from the cut at his temple and followed the hard line of his cheek before disappearing beneath his jaw. Smoke drifted between them from the two ruined cars, carrying gasoline, scorched rubber and the darker scent of Nero’s pheromones into the cold November air.
Behind him, fire flickered near the crushed front of the new car.
Sebastian barely saw it.
He was looking at Nero’s eyes.
The same purple that had stared at him from the middle of the red sea.
The serpent had always been coiled around itself, enormous black-and-purple scales disappearing beneath waves before rising again, its jaws locked around its own tail as though there could be neither beginning nor end.
Until tonight.
Tonight the serpent had released itself and followed him.
Sebastian’s breathing slowed.
Something shifted into place with such terrible simplicity that he wondered how he had missed it for years.
The visions had never belonged to him alone.
He had assumed they did because he was the one remembering them. He had treated every fragment as another warning his own mind had somehow dragged across lives—the palace corridors, blood, Nero dying, Nero loving him, versions of their lives that bent in different directions before collapsing into another ending.
But some of those endings had felt different.
Some carried the unmistakable pull of the siren blood he had inherited from Lucas, outcomes warped around Sebastian himself, around choices and instincts that belonged to his side of whatever impossible mechanism tied their lives together.
The others always ended with Nero.
And afterward, everything began again.
Sebastian stared at the man kneeling before him.
"You."
Nero’s brows drew together.
Sebastian hardly heard himself.
"It was you."
A gust moved across the highway, dragging smoke sideways and exposing the wreckage behind Nero in flashes of twisted black metal and broken glass. Farther down the road, the lights of the small Saharian city glowed through the haze exactly as they had in the vision.
Exactly as they had before.
Sebastian felt his stomach turn.
The serpent biting its own tail had never represented time trapping them.
It represented Nero refusing to let time finish.
Each time they reached an ending Nero could not accept, he folded it back into itself.
Nero was the ouroboros.
Sebastian pressed a bloodied hand against his mouth, staring at him while memories he had never understood rearranged themselves around that knowledge. Nero begging. Nero laughing while dying. Nero tearing his own heart from his chest rather than accepting that Sebastian might leave him. Lives where Nero had reached the end and somehow forced existence to give them another beginning.
How many times?
Sebastian did not know.
The thought was horrifying.
So was the quieter truth underneath it.
Nero had always been this insane.
This was simply the first life in which Sebastian had finally seen all of it.
"My moon?"
Nero’s voice was careful now.
He had no idea.
Sebastian could see that too.
Whatever part of Nero had turned the wheel backward through other lives had not followed him consciously into this one. The man kneeling on the asphalt only knew that Sebastian had tried to leave him and that his answer had been to wreck two cars rather than allow it.
Sebastian should have been terrified.
He probably was.
He was also still so furious that the two emotions had become almost impossible to distinguish.
He started toward him.
Nero’s posture changed immediately.
His hand left his shirt, but he stayed where he was, watching Sebastian cross the bloodstained asphalt with an uncertainty Sebastian had almost never seen on his face.
Sebastian stopped directly in front of him.
Nero tipped his head back.
Up close, the damage from the crash was worse. Blood had soaked several strands of pale hair near his temple, his lower lip was split, and bruising had begun to darken beneath the open edge of his shirt. Tiny fragments of safety glass glittered across one shoulder of the expensive black coat he had worn to their wedding reception.
Sebastian caught him by the collar.
Nero inhaled sharply as Sebastian twisted the fabric around his fist and hauled.
At over two meters tall, Nero was far too large for Sebastian to drag anywhere gracefully, but surprise did most of the work. Nero planted one foot beneath himself and rose, towering over Sebastian once more while Sebastian kept his grip locked around the front of his shirt.
Their faces were close.
Nero looked down at him, violet eyes searching his expression.
Sebastian kissed him.
There was nothing gentle in it.
He pulled Nero down by the collar and drove his mouth against his hard enough that their teeth struck. Nero stumbled half a step before one hand caught Sebastian’s waist, instinctively careful of his ribs even now, while the other hovered beside his face without touching until Sebastian pushed closer.
The split in Nero’s lip opened again.
Sebastian tasted blood.
His own mouth had been cut somewhere during the crash, and he could no longer tell whose blood was whose. Smoke coated his tongue, mixed with the dark spice and burning heat of Nero’s pheromones, while Sebastian’s own scent rose beneath it, warmer and sweeter than it had been months ago.
Nero made a broken sound into his mouth.
Sebastian hated how familiar his body still felt.
Hated how easily Nero’s hand settled against him.
Hated that underneath the rage, betrayal and fresh terror of understanding what Nero had been across lives, Sebastian still loved him enough that kissing him felt like coming home after trying to burn the house down.
He broke the kiss only when his injured ribs protested hard enough to force air from his lungs.
Nero followed for a fraction of a second before stopping himself.
Their foreheads nearly touched.
Sebastian still had his fist wrapped in Nero’s collar.
"You listen to me now."