Chapter 107| What Belongs to Her(First Gift Bonus - )
107| What Belongs to Her
Myria found him alone and quiet on the villa’s private deck that evening, the others having scattered toward their own pursuits, and settled beside him with the quiet, deliberate grace that had once commanded entire raid parties, now turned toward something considerably gentler.
"You’ve been quiet tonight," Allen observed, glancing over as she curled into his side.
"Just thinking," Myria said. "About how strange it feels, having an entire evening with nothing demanding my attention except you."
"Strange good, or strange unsettling?"
"Strange good," Myria confirmed, a faint smile touching her lips. "Though I confess, some part of me still keeps a running tally of every hour that passes without incident. Old habits from six years of constant, careful vigilance don’t disappear simply because the danger currently has."
Allen considered that carefully, reaching for her hand. "Do you ever resent it? The vigilance, I mean. Always needing to watch, calculate, prepare."
Myria was quiet for a long moment, turning the question over with the same careful precision she brought to every strategic assessment. "No," she said finally. "I used to think it was simply necessity, back before you. Something forced onto me by circumstance. Now I understand it differently." She met his gaze directly, something fierce and unguarded flickering behind her sharp, crystalline eyes. "I watch this closely because you’re mine, Allen. All of this — you, this life, everything we’ve built together — belongs to me as much as I belong to it. I don’t intend to let my attention slip simply because the world’s grown momentarily quiet."
"That sounds almost possessive," Allen said, a teasing note entering his voice despite the genuine warmth behind the observation.
"It is possessive," Myria said, entirely unashamed of the admission. "I spent six years believing I’d never be permitted to want anything this completely again. Now that I have it, I intend to guard it as fiercely as I once guarded an entire raid party’s survival. That includes you, specifically. Especially you."
Allen felt something warm and fierce settle in his own chest at the unguarded intensity of her devotion, understanding, not for the first time, exactly how thoroughly Myria’s love had always carried an edge sharpened by exactly how much she’d once nearly lost.
"I don’t mind," he said softly. "Being watched that closely. Being wanted that fiercely."
"Good," Myria said, something satisfied and possessive threading through the single word. "Because it’s not going to change, Allen. Not now, not years from now. If anything, I suspect it only grows more absolute the longer we’re together."
She shifted closer, resting her head against his shoulder, and Allen wrapped an arm around her, drawing quiet comfort from the particular, unshakeable certainty of her devotion — not smothering, never that, but steady and complete in a way that had never once made him feel diminished, only cherished.
"Can I tell you something?" Myria said eventually, voice softer now.
"Always."
"Watching you on that jet ski dock today, laughing with Halden and Cole, completely unguarded — I found myself cataloguing every detail. The exact sound of your laugh. The particular way sunlight caught your hair. I do that constantly, you know. Memorize you, over and over, as if some part of me still doesn’t quite believe I’m allowed to keep you."
"You are," Allen said gently. "Completely."
"I know," Myria said. "That doesn’t stop the cataloguing, though. I don’t think it ever will."
Allen pressed a slow, tender kiss to her temple, and they settled into comfortable, watchful silence beneath the star-scattered tropical sky, Myria’s quiet, fierce devotion settling over him like something considerably more precious than mere affection — the particular, unshakeable weight of being loved by someone who had, quite deliberately, chosen never to let that love grow careless.
The ocean continued its steady, distant rhythm below their deck, and somewhere further along the shore, faint traces of Irene’s continued laughter carried on the warm evening breeze, and Allen found himself, for one suspended, perfect moment, entirely, gratefully content with exactly the shape his impossible, considerable life had grown into.
"There’s something else," Myria admitted after a while, voice carrying a rare, careful vulnerability. "Something I haven’t quite said aloud, even to you, until tonight."
"Tell me."
"Sometimes I imagine what would happen if someone ever tried to take this from me again," she said quietly. "Not hypothetically. Specifically. I run through the scenarios, Allen — every possible threat, every possible failure of my own vigilance — and I catalogue exactly what I would do to whoever attempted it." Her fingers tightened slightly against his shirt. "It’s not healthy, probably. But I don’t know how to simply stop caring this much, now that I’ve finally been allowed to care at all."
Allen considered her admission carefully, understanding the shape of it completely — the same fierce, protective devotion that lived in each of his wives, sharpened differently in Myria by six years of enforced helplessness now finally, permanently undone. "I don’t think it needs to stop," he said gently. "I think it just needs somewhere safe to live. And I intend to keep giving you exactly that, for as long as you’ll let me."
Myria’s answering smile carried something raw and grateful, and she pressed closer against him, the last of her careful, guarded composure finally, fully dissolving into simple, unguarded contentment.
"Then I suppose," she murmured, "you’re stuck with my considerable possessiveness indefinitely."
"I wouldn’t have it any other way," Allen said, and meant it with the same complete, unwavering certainty that had carried them both through every impossible circumstance since a cold car ride into Hegeville had first bound them together.
They stayed like that a long while longer, wrapped together beneath the tropical night sky, until the stars had wheeled considerably further across the darkness and the villa’s other lights had gradually dimmed to sleep, and Allen carried Myria’s quiet, fierce devotion with him into his own rest, grateful, as always, for exactly how completely and unapologetically she had chosen to love him.