He took a breath. “Pain,” he said.
My chest tightened.
“Jealousy.” His shoulders drew tight. He didn’t look away. I had asked for the truth.
“Fear,” he said, “that once there is another bond beside mine, you will discover mine was the first language you learned, and his is the one you dream in.”
Oh.
I reached for the bond without meaning to. Warm under the pain. Guarded. A large shape had lowered itself close to the ground and didn’t yet trust my hand.
“I know the fear is not a fact,” he said.
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe it?”
His mouth tightened. “Not yet.”
I reached up and put my hand against his face and he went still beneath my touch. “I chose you,” I said.
“I know.”
“No.”
His eyes sharpened.
“You know it as information,” I said. “I need you to hear it as a promise.”
The bond pulled tight between us. I held his look and didn’t let either of us escape into law, strategy, clan politics, or the very tempting option of kissing until nothing had edges.
“I chose you. I may choose him too. That doesn’t make you less mine.”
His breath left him slowly, and through the bond I felt the words reach him layer by layer. His dragon didn’t accept comfort on faith. It tested the shape of it, pressed against the edges, searched for the lie.There was none.
Under my ribs, something tightened first, then warmed with careful, aching increments. Dominic closed his eyes, and the pain in him reached me along the line. Jealousy, fear, want, and beneath all of it, the brutal discipline of a man trying not to turn love into possession.
When he opened his eyes, the pain was still there, but it had somewhere to stand now.
“If you choose him,” he said, voice rough, “I want to be there.”
“Okay.”
“Not to grant permission.”
“I’d assume not,” I said, arching a brow.
“To stand with you,” he said. The softness of it caught me off guard. Then he added, quieter, “And to stand with him.”
That surprised me.
“If he enters this nest,” Dominic said, “he enters correctly. Not through secrecy. Not through injury. Not through a gap I left because I was too proud to acknowledge him.”
I studied his face. “You respect him.”
“I do.”
