Afterward,I lie in the curve of his body and stare at the glowing ceiling.
Something settles at the base of my awareness. Steady. Permanent. A presence that will never leave, a thread connecting me to him at a level deeper than flesh.
By rights, I should want to run. Should be plotting escape, calculating distance.
Instead I feel... safe.
Not protected—that word implies weakness, implies needing someone else to fight my battles. This is the security of knowing, with absolute certainty, that I am no longer alone. That my existence matters to someone who will never stop fighting for it.
“The gods will know.” I speak the words to the ceiling, testing them. “They’ll sense the bond. Understand what we’ve become.”
“Yes.” His arm tightens around me. “They’ll send more. Worse. They were already afraid of what we could become—now they have confirmation.”
“We need to move. Find defensible ground. Start hunting before they finish hunting us.”
“Soon.” His hand slides down my spine, tracing vertebrae that no longer ache with latent death. “Not yet.”
I turn my head. Study his profile in the amber light—the hard lines of his face, the stillness that persists even in rest. He meets my gaze with eyes that have stopped pretending they don’t want me.
“Thank you.”
The words clearly catch him off guard. “For what?”
“For not letting me die.” I press my palm against his damaged ribs, feel the accelerated healing that’s knitting bone and tissue back together. “For making a choice I couldn’t make for myself. For—” I stop. Start again. “For being here.”
He doesn’t respond with words. Instead he pulls me closer, fitting my body against his like we were designed to occupy the same space. His lips brush my forehead—the gesture so unexpected that I freeze, storing it as evidence of a tenderness I didn’t know he possessed.
Then his grip tightens back to its normal possessive pressure, and the moment passes.
But I remember it.
I drift eventually.Not sleep—a lighter state, the kind of rest I haven’t been able to achieve since the poison first entered my system. I float in a space that smells like fire and stone and him.
The dreams that plagued me are absent. The visions of my own death that have driven me across territories and through dangers—gone, as if the future they predicted no longer exists.
Maybe it doesn’t.
I am not the woman who left the border settlements weeks ago. That woman was dying. This woman is going to live.
I can fight now. Truly fight, without holding anything back.
The gods made a mistake, sending that abomination after us.
They failed.
And now they’re going to learn exactly what that failure costs.
When I fully wake,Kaster is watching me.
His position hasn’t changed—still propped against the cave wall, still holding me against his side with an arm that hasn’t loosened its grip. But his attention has sharpened into that absolute focus I’ve come to recognize.
“Your heartbeat changed.” His voice carries the rough edge of someone who hasn’t slept. “You were thinking.”
“Planning.” I push myself upright, noting the aches that accompany the movement. Pleasant aches. The kind that come from exertion rather than decay. “The gods will escalate. We need to be ready.”
“We will be.” His fingers curl around the back of my neck. Firm. Sure. “They’ve never faced a mated pair before. They don’t know what we’re capable of.”
“Neither do we.”
