Dax kissed her again, this time without urgency.
Beyond the guest-suite walls, the clan prepared for war.
Inside, Dax and Veya had accelerated past caution and into something neither could yet name. It was fast, reckless, and complicated by almost every force surrounding them.
It was also real.
Chapter 34
Dax had not moved far from Veya after their bodies finally stilled.
He leaned against the headboard with his legs extended beneath the sheets and one arm resting loosely across his stomach. Veya remained beside him with her knees drawn up, staring toward the closed curtains as though she could see the darkness beyond them.
Neither had entirely settled into the silence following what they had done.
“I want to understand,” Veya said.
Dax turned his head toward her.
“That is an ambitious opening.”
“I mean everything.”
His eyebrow lifted.
“You may need to narrow that down.”
“The prophecy, Norse, the heretics, the maps downstairs, and whatever war I walked into.” She looked directly at him. “I want to understand what I became.”
Dax held her gaze before rubbing one hand across the back of his neck.
“That is not a small request.”
“I’m not small anymore.”
The words stopped him.
Veya did not speak with pride. She was stating the only truth available to her. She had been remade by the blood of a male who had never intended to care what happened afterward, and something inside her now responded to a world she had never known existed.
She no longer felt entirely human.
Worse, she could no longer remember whether being human had ever made her feel entirely herself.
Dax shifted until he faced her more fully.
“You are tethered to one of Sule’s original line.”
“I know what it feels like.” Veya tightened her arms around her knees. “It feels as though part of my body belongs somewhere else. There is a thread constantly pulling toward Rhen. Sometimes I can taste his blood when he is nowhere near me. Sometimes I smell him before I see him.”
Dax’s jaw tightened.
“The connection came through his blood. That much is obvious.”
“What else?”
“The heretic magic attached to you may have changed the way the tether formed, but nobody in this house understands enough to tell you exactly how.”
“You don’t know?”
