I meet his gaze again, steady despite everything twisting under my ribs. “Then maybe,” I say slowly, “we stop pretending this doesn’t need dealing with.”
The bond hums. It feels warm and alive. It feels like it’s waiting.
I hold his gaze for a second longer, then tilt my head slightly, insistence slipping into my voice. “Tell me something,” I say.
His focus narrows instantly. “What?”
“If you stop holding it back,” I say, keeping my tone level even though my pulse has kicked up again, “if you don’t contain it like you’ve been doing…” I let the words hang for half a breath before finishing them. “What happens?”
Varek goes very still. Not the controlled stillness he usually wears like armour, but something tighter. His jaw flexes, and for a moment, I think—hope, maybe—that he’ll deflect. That he’ll soften it. Give me something easier to sit with.
But he can’t. Not with me.
His voice, when it comes, is lower. Rougher. Stripped of the careful distance he’s been holding onto. “It will intensify.”
The words settle between us, heavy and deliberate.
“In what way?” I press.
His gaze doesn’t leave mine. “The heat will deepen,” he says. “The need will override restraint more quickly. Instinct will take precedence over reason.”
My breath shifts, but I don’t look away. “And the pain?”
“It will sharpen,” he replies. “Until it is… resolved.”
Resolved.
That word hits differently. It seems infinitely more final… more dangerous.
“And me?” I ask, because I already know the answer but I need to hear it anyway. “What happens to me?”
There’s the smallest pause.
“You will eventually feel my pain,” he says. “I will struggle to contain it all the time.”
I swallow. “The pain will be like before?”
“No.”
That gets my full attention.
His eyes flare slightly, something deeper moving through them now. “Stronger.”
The bond pulses at that, like it’s reacting to the truth of it, a low, steady thrum that forms under my skin and refuses to be ignored.
I let out a slow breath, my thoughts tangling in ways I’m not even going to try to unpick right now. “Okay,” I murmur, because of course it would be.
Nothing about this is halfway. Nothing abouthimis.
I drag my gaze over him again, taking in the tension he’s holding, the control that’s clearly costing him more than I realised. Then I look back up at his face.
“Yeah,” I say softly. “We’re definitely not ignoring this anymore.”
The bond hums in agreement. And this time, neither of us pulls away.
CHAPTER
TEN
