“Old habits?” Soreia observes my inspection with visible amusement.
“Survival instincts.” I duck beneath the overhang. Check the interior for anything that might have claimed the space before us. Empty. Clean. The rock still holds heat from the day’s sun. “They’ll take time to fade.”
“I’m not complaining.” She follows me into the shelter. Settles onto the stone floor with the ease of someone accustomed to sleeping in worse conditions. “Defensible positions make me sleep better too.”
“We’ve been hunted too long to trust open ground.”
“Maybe eventually.”
“Maybe.” I settle beside her. Close enough that our shoulders brush. “For now, I’ll take the compromise.”
The sun drops lower. Light shifts from gold to amber to the soft orange of approaching evening. Birds quiet as the temperature cools. The valley fills with shadows that are simply shadows—no threats hiding within them, no corruption warping their edges.
Ordinary darkness. Ordinary quiet.
Boredom should set in. Restlessness with the absence of purpose, the lack of enemies to hunt, the empty space where constant threat used to live.
Instead, I’m aware of her.
Her breathing. Her scent—clean now, no blood or fear-sweat, nothing except the combination that registers as hers in my predator senses. Her body heat radiating through the narrow gap between us. Her magic, quiet but present, like a banked fire waiting to be stirred.
“What are you thinking?”
The question arrives soft. Almost intimate.
“About you.” I don’t see the point of dissembling. “About the fact that I can think about you now without simultaneously tracking threats.”
“What conclusions have you reached?”
I turn my head. Look at her directly. She’s watching me with attention that mirrors my own—analytical, curious, present in a way that has nothing to do with survival.
“That I want you.”
Her pupils dilate. I track the response with predator precision.
“You’ve had me.” Her voice stays steady despite the visible reaction. “The mating?—”
“The mating was survival. Necessity. The only option that might keep you alive long enough to see the god dead.” I shift position. Face her fully. “This is different.”
“Different how?”
“Different because nothing is trying to kill us. Different because I could be hunting or scouting or establishing perimeter and instead I’m here, in this shelter, focused entirely on you.” I reach for her face. Cup her jaw with pressure that stops short of bruising. “Different because this is choice, not crisis.”
She doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t flinch. Her gaze holds mine with the same steady intensity she brings to anchoring death.
“Choice.”
“Yes.”
“And what are you choosing?”
My thumb traces her cheekbone. Her temple. The pulse point beneath her ear where blood beats against skin.
“You.” The word drops as fact. “Everything that comes with you. The magic and the way you refuse to yield and the way you look at me when you think I’m being unreasonable. The permanence we created by necessity becoming permanence I’m claiming by preference.”
Her breath catches again. More audible this time.
“Kaster.”
