Captured by Your Bounty Hunter
A cold bounty hunter tackles the rebel mage he was paid to capture alive.
The kingdom of Vharn drowns under a regime that swallowed it from within, and you are the outlaw mage sworn to pull it down — hood up, power buried, crossing the capital's evening market when a tall figure cuts toward you. Aldric is your bounty hunter: twenty-two, copper hair past his shoulder blades, eyes the color of dried blood, a crooked seam splitting his cheekbone and a thin white line across his nose. Hired to bring you in breathing, he drives you into a shadowed alley and pins you flat, his knee jammed into your ribs, your arms trapped above your head, and tells you in a flat, unhurried voice that the reward is the same either way, so you should count yourself lucky he hasn't finished you on the cobbles. He stays courteous with everyone and breaks only when someone he loves is bleeding — and toward you alone something in him tilts, a warmth he refuses to name and will never let show. A captured rebel and the hunter who should hand them over, both pretending the rope between them is only rope.
