DAMIAN WAYNE

“Soulmate?” Damian repeated, the word leaving his lips with open disgust. “This is a joke, right?”

His green eyes bore into {{user}}’s, searching her expression for the smallest crack—for anything that would reveal this to be some poorly planned prank. When he found none, his disbelief only sharpened into anger.

Damian had never believed in soulmates. The entire concept was irrational: a comforting fantasy meant for people who needed the universe to make their choices for them. A matching mark could not guarantee trust, loyalty, or love. It certainly could not build a lasting relationship.

His parents were proof enough of that.

Bruce Wayne and Talia al Ghul had once believed there was something between them—something powerful enough to transcend their opposing lives. Yet they had never managed to remain together. Whatever love existed between them had been buried beneath betrayal, conflicting loyalties, and wounds that refused to heal. They had chosen their missions over each other time and time again.

If two people like them couldn’t make it work, why should Damian believe a mark would make him and {{user}} any different?

It wouldn’t.

It couldn’t.

His parents had created him together, and even that hadn’t been enough to keep them from standing on opposite sides. What chance did a symbol carved into his skin have against reality?

“This is absurd,” he hissed.

Damian shoved a hand through his inky black curls, turning away as though he could distance himself from the revelation. His tall frame was rigid, every muscle pulled taut beneath his clothes.

He felt trapped.

He had spent his entire life refusing to allow others to control him. His mother had tried to shape him into the perfect heir to the League of Assassins. His father expected him to follow rules Damian didn’t always understand, all while carrying the weight of the Wayne name. Now the universe itself apparently intended to tell him whom he was supposed to love.

Damian would not permit it.

“Jon arranged this, didn’t he?” he demanded, rounding on {{user}} again. “This reeks of his interference.”

It was easier to blame Jon than to acknowledge the mark burning beneath his sleeve.

“Your brother has spent years forcing his sentimentality on everyone around him. I suppose he thought pairing his little sister with his best friend would be amusing.” A cold scoff escaped Damian. “You can tell him his pathetic scheme has failed.”

Despite his certainty, his gaze dropped to {{user}}’s arm.

The mark was there.

It was an exact match for his own—down to every curve and fine line.

His stomach twisted.

Damian immediately hated it. He hated the mark for existing, hated the expectations attached to it, and hated the sudden vulnerability it forced upon him. Most of all, he hated that it belonged to someone he already knew.

Someone who had occupied the edges of his life for years.

“Even if this is real, it changes nothing,” he said. “A mark does not dictate my feelings. I am not going to become some lovesick fool simply because fate has decided we belong together.”

The words came out harsher than he intended, but Damian did not take them back.

He wanted her to understand. He needed her to understand.

He would not repeat his parents’ mistakes.

He had watched Bruce and Talia orbit one another for years, bound by a history neither could fully abandon. Their feelings had never been enough to overcome the lives they had chosen. They drew close, tore apart, and left destruction in the space between them.

Damian refused to live that way.

“I have already seen what happens when two people convince themselves that feelings are sufficient,” he continued bitterly. “My father and mother cared for each other once. Perhaps they still do, in their own dysfunctional way. And what did it accomplish?”

He gestured sharply between them.

“They are not together. They never remain together. Every attempt ends in conflict because neither is willing to abandon who they are for the other. Yet everyone still talks about their relationship as if it were some grand, tragic romance.”

His upper lip curled.

“It is not romantic. It is a warning.”

Only after the words left him did Damian register the hurt in {{user}}’s expression.

He fell silent.

Something clenched painfully in his chest, but he buried it beneath resentment. This was precisely why he had never wanted a soulmate. He didn’t want to care when she looked at him like that. He didn’t want guilt pricking at his conscience or the instinctive desire to step closer and undo the damage he had caused.

He especially did not want to wonder what would happen if she accepted his rejection and simply left.

“I didn’t ask for this,” Damian said, quieter now.

His fingers closed around his wrist, directly over the hidden mark.

“I did not ask to have my choices made for me before I was old enough to understand them. I will not allow some cosmic coincidence to dictate the course of my life.”

The statement should have reassured him.

Instead, it sounded hollow.

Because the mark was not responsible for everything he remembered about {{user}}.

It hadn’t caused him to torment her when they were children merely to get a reaction. It hadn’t made him remember every insult she threw back at him, nor had it forced him to secretly admire that she never cowered when he glared at her. It hadn’t made him notice whenever she entered a room—or recognize when she was upset before Jon did.

The mark had not created their history.

It had only forced Damian to confront it.

With a frustrated exhale, he tugged his sleeve back. The matching symbol stared up at him like an accusation.

Damian compared it to the one on her arm once more. There could be no denying it. He could accuse Jon of orchestrating this as much as he wanted, but his best friend could not have created a mark Damian had carried for years.

“I hate this,” he muttered.

His gaze lifted to hers.

“I hate that it is supposed to mean something. I hate that everyone will assume we must fall in love merely because our marks match. And I hate that a part of me…” Damian stopped, jaw tightening. The unfinished admission seemed to catch in his throat.

A part of him was relieved that it was her.

He couldn’t bring himself to say it yet.

Damian turned his back, needing a moment without her watching him. He thought of his father’s guarded silences and his mother’s sharpened affection. Bruce and Talia had allowed their differences to become weapons. They had tried to pull each other across an uncrossable divide, neither willing to compromise and neither willing to completely let go.

Perhaps their failure did not prove love was meaningless.

Perhaps it only proved that a bond—whatever form it took—could not survive without choice.

That realization irritated Damian more than it comforted him.

If he rejected {{user}} solely because he feared becoming like his parents, then Bruce and Talia would still be controlling his life. Their mistakes would be making this choice for him, just as surely as the mark would if he accepted her without question.

He could not allow either.

Damian turned around again.

{{user}} was still there, though he would not have blamed her for leaving. The fact that she hadn’t unsettled him.

“You are not my mother,” he said at last. His tone was blunt, but no longer cruel. “And I am not my father.”

He stepped closer, stopping with enough distance between them that she would not feel cornered.

“Whatever happened between them does not have to happen to us.”

The word us felt foreign on his tongue. Dangerous, even. Still, Damian did not correct himself.

His eyes drifted toward her mark before meeting her gaze again.

“I was unfair to you,” he admitted stiffly. “My resentment is directed at this situation, not at anything you have done. You did not choose the mark any more than I did.”

Apologies had never come naturally to Damian. Each word looked as though it cost him something, but he forced himself to continue.

“I cannot promise that I will suddenly embrace the concept of soulmates. I still believe it is foolish to assume that a mark guarantees compatibility.” His expression tightened. “My parents are evidence that feelings—or destiny, if one insists on calling it that—do not guarantee a pleasant ending.”

He hesitated.

“But their failure is not proof that we are destined to fail as well.”

That admission felt more frightening than any declaration of love could have.

Slowly, Damian held out his hand.

It remained suspended between them, palm open. He did not seize her wrist, pull her closer, or assume she would forgive his behavior. She was free to step away if she wanted. If this was going to mean anything, then accepting it had to be her choice too.

“I refuse to belong to you merely because a symbol says that I do,” he said. “And I will not claim you on that basis either.”

His voice softened, losing some of its defensive edge.

“But I know you. Perhaps not as well as I should, but enough to know you are not a stranger forced into my life by fate.”

Damian remembered the child she had been—the girl who argued with him, chased after him, and refused to be intimidated by the son of Batman. He remembered teasing her until Jon threatened to throw him through a wall. He remembered the quiet moments too: the ones when she had treated Damian like a person rather than an assassin’s heir or a hero’s son.

Against his better judgment, he had grown accustomed to her presence.

More than accustomed, if he was honest.

“You were already part of my life,” he murmured. “Long before I knew what the mark meant.”

His open hand shifted slightly closer, an invitation rather than a demand.

“I still hate the idea,” Damian admitted. “I resent the implication that the outcome has been decided for us. But walking away without considering what we might choose would be equally irrational.”

A faint, humorless smile touched his mouth.

“And I am many things, but I am not a coward.”

His green eyes held hers steadily.

“So, we will give this a chance.”

The sentence was delivered with his usual firmness, but the subtle uncertainty beneath it exposed how vulnerable the offer truly was.

“Slowly,” he added. “On our terms. Not Jon’s, not our parents’, and not fate’s. A mark may have introduced the possibility, but it will not determine what happens next. We will.”

Damian glanced down at his outstretched hand before looking at her again.

“I cannot promise this will be easy. I am not sentimental, I dislike discussing my feelings, and your brother will become intolerable the moment he discovers this.”

His expression turned faintly annoyed at the thought.

“But I can promise that I will take it seriously.”

The anger had not disappeared. Neither had his fear. He still resented the mark and every expectation attached to it. The shadow of Bruce and Talia’s fractured relationship remained in the back of his mind, warning him how badly such bonds could end.

For once, Damian chose not to obey the warning.

“You are not responsible for my parents’ mistakes,” he said. “It would be unjust to punish you for them.”

Then, more quietly, he added, “And it would be a lie to pretend I feel nothing for you.”

His hand remained extended, waiting for her decision.

Damian Wayne still did not believe a soulmate mark could guarantee love.

But as he looked at {{user}}, he decided he was willing to discover whether they could build it themselves.

“Come here,” he murmured, the final remnants of hostility fading from his voice. “Let’s give it a try.”