Page 164 of Feralheart

I wrung them out and draped them over my arm. They’d dry by morning if I hung them near enough to a fire.

Walking back toward camp, I caught movement near the elite tents.

Three riders stood in a tight cluster, Lady Severine at the center, her posture rigid. Two others flanked her, a man with gray at his temples and a woman whose face I couldn’t make out from this distance. Vella’s hand sliced through the air. The others nodded, but I couldn’t hear anything they said.

By the time I returned to our section, Reece’s tent was dark. He’d collapsed inside, and was probably asleep before his head hit the bedroll.

Selira lifted her head when I approached, her awareness sharpening through our bond.

Danger?

“I don’t know yet,” I said, running my hand along her leg. “Maybe.”

Watch. Protect ours.

“He’s not ours.”

Her rumble called me a liar.

I hung my clothes on a makeshift line someone had strung between two posts and found food sitting in a cloth-wrapped bundle near my pack. Bread that wasn’t stale. Roasted meat that didn’t taste or look like boot leather. Cheese without mold along the edges.

Fen had sent this.

My throat threatened to close around the first bite.

I ate, my back to the elite camp. But I could feel his presence the way you felt sunlight on your skin even with your eyes closed.

I glanced over my shoulder.

Fen stood thirty feet away, slightly to the left. When he shifted his weight, I felt it. When his shoulders dropped, I wanted to carry some of the weight for him. The connection threaded through my spine, pulled tight, making my skin too aware.

His expression remained blank, that careful prince mask I knew too well, but I’d seen what was underneath. I knew what he was hiding.

I looked away fast, tucking hair behind my ear. But he’d caught me staring at him the way I’d stare at water after three days in the desert.

Selira rumbled from where she’d curled up nearby.

“Don’t,” I muttered under my breath.

Her laughter came through our bond.

Tolross’s poem sat in my pocket, the paper soft from handling. I pulled it out, running my thumb over the surface. And I tucked it back before the ache in my chest could crack ribs.

Fen stood outside his tent now, talking to one of the other elites. But his shoulders had locked higher than they should be, and his jaw was tight enough I could see it from here. His gaze slanted toward the clusters of elite riders chatting together.

He looked concerned. I wanted to ask him what was wrong.

My feet shifted before I could stop them, my body turning toward him. I forced myself still. Even if I joined him, what would I say? You looked concerned from across the meadow, so I came to investigate.

He’d see right through it. Know that I was watching him as closely as he was watching me, that I cared whether he was falling apart.

Selira’s amusement rolled through me. Yours wants to go to his. Why fight?

“It’s complicated.”

Simple. His saved mine. Mine saved his. This how bonds work.

“That’s dragon logic. Humans are messier.”