Chapter 360: Untold Stories

NOAH

"Don’t start," I said, though there wasn’t any real weight behind it. "I’m working here."

"You’re touching my skin," he said, his head turning slightly to the side so I could see the sharp line of his jaw against the white linen. "That doesn’t feel like work, Noah."

"It’s a therapeutic massage for a recovering patient," I replied, my thumbs pressing into the small of his back, right above the white edge of the towel. "It’s purely medical."

"Is that what we’re calling it now?"

My hands paused for a fraction of a second against his skin before I smoothed them back up toward his neck, my palms warm against his shoulders. "Stop talking. Or I’ll start using my elbows."

He let out a short, quiet huff of laughter and went still, his breathing settling into a slow, even rhythm against the mattress.

It felt like a small victory, getting him to actually remain quiet for more than five minutes.

With the room silent, my eyes began to trace the vast, intricate gray ink that covered almost every inch of his back.

Up close, the tattoos weren’t just large, solid blocks of shadow; they were full of tiny, sprawling details that you’d never see unless you were sitting exactly where I was sitting, with your hands already on his skin.

There was a small, thin feather tucked into the heavy shading of a larger piece over his left ribs, the blade so fine it looked like a silver needle.

Further up, near his shoulder blade, a single tiny flower was woven into the dark, smoky background of something else, its petals barely visible against the gray ink.

There were words too... tiny, elegant script from another language hidden in the crevices of the larger designs, some of them too small to read even from this distance.

My fingers followed the lines without my brain fully giving them permission, my tips tracing the slightly raised edges of the old ink.

I wondered about them. I wondered what each one meant, what version of him had sat in a chair and watched those needles go into his skin, and what he was carrying around permanently that he had never once mentioned to me.

Then, the thought arrived. It came slow and heavy, the kind of quiet realization that made the air in my lungs feel a little colder.

He’s killed people.

He’d told me that himself, not like a confession or a secret he was ashamed of, but just as a casual detail of his life.

I only knew this version of him... the one who teased me about everything, the one who kept me tucked against his chest until the sun came up, the one who accepted Cyan’s ridiculousness even when he didn’t know what to do with them.

I didn’t know the man who ran this empire. I didn’t know the person behind the scars, or the reputation that made grown, armed men go completely quiet the moment his name was spoken in a room.

A faint, steady chill moved through my chest. It wasn’t panic; it was just an honest, heavy truth that finally landed with its full weight.

What does it say about me that I know only a quarter of what he’s done, and I stayed anyway? What kind of person does that make me?

My fingers kept moving, sliding down toward the lower curve of his right shoulder blade, where the ink clustered into something architectural... the fine, sharp pillars of a gate or a bridge.

Down in the very corner of the stone design, almost hidden by the heavy black border, was a small line of block letters.

They were tiny, no bigger than the tip of my pinky nail. I blinked, leaning a little closer until my breath brushed the skin between his shoulders.

J — U — L — I — A — N.

My hand went completely still against his skin.

The room remained perfectly quiet, the only sound the steady, deep rise and fall of Cassian’s chest against the mattress.

He didn’t move. He had no idea what my fingers had just uncovered beneath the dark ink.

I didn’t say anything, my chest tightening in that familiar, ugly way it always did whenever that name showed up uninvited.

It was that same old, messy knot I couldn’t seem to untie... a strange, heavy grief for someone I’d never met, mixed with a sharp prickle of jealousy that made me feel small and ashamed.

And underneath all of it, just the simple, stupid human want to know the rest of the story.

Cassian shifted slightly against the pillow, his shoulder twitching under my palm. "You stopped."

"Sorry," I said quickly, my hands instantly resuming their movement, though my palms felt suddenly cold. My fingers moved too fast, losing the slow rhythm from before. "Just... lost my place for a second."

He turned his head fully to the side, his dark eyes opening as he looked up at me through the fringe of his hair.

There was a sharp, sudden focus in his look... the tone of a man who noticed every single shift in the air.

"Noah. What is it?"

I opened my mouth, the words dry against my throat, not even sure what lie I was about to tell him.

A sharp, heavy knock rattled the bedroom door. It was perfectly timed, the kind of sudden noise that felt like the universe had personally stepped in to save me from having to answer.

"Open," Cassian called out, his voice dropping back into its normal, flat authority without him even lifting his chin from the pillow.

I immediately scrambled back, trying to put some distance between myself and the mattress, suddenly acutely aware of how we looked... Cassian face down with a towel barely clinging to his hips and my hands still damp with oil.

But the door was already swinging wide. One of the primary security guards stepped into the room, his dark suit immaculate, his expression completely flat as his eyes took in the bed, the towel, and me scrambling toward the nightstand.

It was the face of a man who had long since run out of the capacity to be surprised by anything that happened in this house.

"Sir," the guard said, his voice level. "Cyan has arrived. He’s downstairs."