I let him. Meet his intensity with my own, fingers digging into his shoulders, hips rising to meet his.
This isn’t gentle. It never is with him. But it’s deliberate in ways that transcend pure hunger. He pays attention to my responses—notes when I gasp, adjusts when I tense, finds angles that make me arch against him with sounds I’d be embarrassed by if I could think clearly enough to care.
He’s learned my body the way he learned his hunting grounds. Systematically. Thoroughly.
The thought sends a fresh surge of heat through my blood.
“Harder.” The word escapes without filtering through conscious thought.
He obliges. His rhythm shifts, intensifies, drives the air from my lungs with each thrust. My magic flickers at the edges of myawareness—not responding to threat, not anchoring endings, just...
aware. Heightened by the physical sensation, by the proximity, by the bond thrumming between us.
I come apart around him with a cry I can’t suppress. Feel him follow moments later, his body shuddering against mine, his breath ragged against my throat.
We stay tangled together as the aftershocks fade. His weight pressing me into fouled earth, my hands tracing patterns across his scarred back.
“The ground is disgusting.” My voice comes out steadier than expected.
He huffs a sound that might be amusement. “You said harder. Location wasn’t specified.”
“Next time I’ll be more precise.”
“Next time I’ll find a wall that’s still standing.”
I turn my head, press my lips to his jaw. Not affection—not exactly. More like marking. Claiming the same way he claims.
His stillness sharpens.
“We should keep moving.” The words contradict his body language. He hasn’t made any effort to separate from me. “More constructs ahead.”
“We should.” I don’t move either. “They’re not going anywhere.”
“No.” His hand slides up my side, traces the curve of my ribs with attention that has nothing to do with threats. “They’re not.”
We eventually disentangle.Pull ourselves together, check our weapons and supplies, assess the terrain ahead with the professional focus of people who know the job isn’t finished.
But there’s a shift in the silence between us now. An understanding that didn’t exist before—or existed, but hadn’t been named.
I walk beside him as we advance on the next cluster of nests. Not behind, where I’d be protected. Not ahead, where I’d be vulnerable. Beside.
He adjusts his pace to match mine without comment. A small accommodation that means more than words could convey.
“The god knows we’re coming.”I speak without looking at him, my attention fixed on the distant shimmer that marks divine activity. “I sense its attention. Like pressure against the back of my skull.”
“Afraid?”
“No.” The answer surprises me with its honesty. “Aware.”
He pauses at a ridge that overlooks the next section of corrupted terrain. Below us, at least a dozen constructs mill around a structure that must have been a farmhouse before everything went wrong. “What do you sense from it? The god?”
I focus inward. Let my magic extend toward that distant pressure, reading the quality of the attention directed at us.
“Rage. And beneath that—something older. The kind of dread that comes from watching the inevitable approach.”
“Fear.”
“It expected the Abomination to end us. Expected the God-Beast variants to finish what the Abomination started. Instead, we killed them all and kept coming.” I look at him. “Its defenses are crumbling. The distance it relied on is shrinking. And it’s starting to understand we’re not going to stop.”
