The sensation undoes me. Her clenching heat, her voice, the way she looks at me like I’m the only thing in the world—it overwhelms every defense I have. My vision whites. My body locks. I roar as I empty myself inside her, flooding her with everything I have, every barrier between us finally, completely destroyed.
I collapse against her. She wraps her arms around my back, holds me through the aftershocks, presses kisses to my sweat-slicked temple. We stay there, tangled and panting, neither able to move.
Nothing but breathing. The rasp of air. The slow return of sensation.
Then she laughs.
It’s a broken sound—exhausted, bewildered, tinged with something that might be hysteria or might be joy. I lift my head, find her looking at me with eyes that are too bright.
“That didn’t solve anything.” Her voice is hoarse. Raw.
“No.” I pull out slowly. Feel her wince at the loss. “It didn’t.”
“The hunters are still coming.”
“Yes.”
“The Matron still wants what we could produce.”
“Yes.”
“And we just—” She gestures vaguely at the chaos of torn clothes and scratched skin. “—that.”
I look at her. Really look. At the marks I’ve left on her body, the bruises blooming across her hips, the bite on her shoulder that mirrors the one she gave me. She should be horrified. Should be regretting what we’ve done.
She doesn’t look horrified. She looks… satisfied. Exhausted and battered and thoroughly claimed, but satisfied.
“Regret it?”
She considers the question with more seriousness than I expected. Takes her time answering.
“No.” The word is quiet. Certain. “Whatever else happens—I don’t regret this.”
“Even though it changes nothing?”
“Doesn’t it?” She reaches up. Touches my face—the scarred cheek, the blind eye, all the parts of me that should repulse her. “Something changed. I don’t know what yet. But something.”
She’s right. I feel it too—a shift in the foundations. We crossed a line that can’t be uncrossed. Whatever we were before this moment, we’re something else now.
I don’t have a word for it.
We dress in silence.Not awkward—just quiet. Both of us processing what happened, what it means, where it leaves us.
My arm feels different—still damaged, but stable, the rerouted channels humming with power that flows clean instead of fighting against itself.
She fixed me. Saw inside me and fixed me anyway. Then let me inside her in return.
The thought lands in my gut, heavy and unfamiliar.
“We should check on the others.” She ties her robe closed, hiding the marks I left. “They’ll be wondering?—”
“They can wait.”
She looks at me. Surprised.
I cross to her. Cup her face in my hands. Kiss her forehead—gentle, so gentle it surprises us both.
“Thank you.” The words come out rough. Unused. “For fixing me. For… everything.”
