Catalina moved after the light reached the bed.
The line between us brightened at the edges, and her hand pressed once against my ribs.
Searching.
Then she found me.
Her body settled before her eyes opened. She did not lift her head. She took in the room from where she lay: the bed, my arm beneath her, her bare leg tangled with mine under the sheet, the locked door. Then me.
Then, because Catalina missed very little, her gaze shifted to my shoulder.
She lifted one hand and touched the edge of the mark she had made, carefully, as if she did not quite trust the evidence her own body had left behind. Her fingers traced the uneven edge of the bite, and the line she had put in me warmed beneath her hand.
Her eyes came back to mine. “I bit you.”
“You did.”
“That wasn’t a dream.”
“No.”
Her fingers stayed on my shoulder. “Did I hurt you?”
The dragon answered first.Not enough.
The man had better survival instincts. “No.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Dominic.”
“It hurt,” I corrected. “It did not harm me.”
That did not reassure her as much as I had intended.
Her thumb brushed the mark, careful around the edge of it. “And it counted?”
“Yes.”
Her breathing changed. “How much?”
“Completely,” I said. “Between us.”
Her eyes found mine. “But not publicly.”
“No.Publicly, it becomes complicated.”
“Of course it does.”
She watched me for a moment, then looked back at my shoulder as if the mark might provide a more honest answer than I would. “So what did I actually do?”
“You completed the private claim.”
“Private claim,” she repeated, testing the words and finding them suspicious.
“Yes. Not fully legal. Not public. But real.”
She absorbed that without speaking.
“The first bite bonded you to me,” I said. “It made you my center.”
