"Kess." His voice, muffled through wood. Rough like gravel, strained in ways I've never heard from him even on the altar. "I can smell you through the walls. Through the stone. You're everywhere."
"Go away."
"Your heat—it's too soon. The bond is pulling it forward."
"I know that." The words come out half-growl. "Don't you think I fucking know that?"
"Let me help you." A pause, heavy with things left unsaid. "Please."
"I don'tneedyour help." I drag myself upright, pressing my back against the headboard, putting as much distance as I can between myself and that door. "I don't need anything from you."
"You're going to hurt yourself." His voice is closer now, like he's pressed against the wood. "The fever—I can feel it through the bond. The intensity. This isn't a normal heat, Kess. If you try to ride it out alone?—"
"I've survived heats alone for six years." I snarl it at the door, at him, at the universe. "I can survive one more."
"Not like this." Something in his voice cracks. "I can feel what you're feeling. The pain. The need. And I can't—" He stops. Starts again, his voice rougher. "I can lock myself away. Chain myself in the dungeons until it passes. I've done it before. But I need you to tell me now, because in a few more minutes the beast won't let me walk away."
I close my eyes and press my palms against my eyelids until I see stars.
The emptiness inside me is unbearable. Every nerve is screaming for something I refuse to ask for. Every instinct clawing at my resolve, trying to tear it down.
"Go," I manage through gritted teeth. "Lock yourself away. I don't want you."
The lie tastes like ash.
A long pause. Then footsteps, retreating down the corridor. Each one fainter than the last.
The bond screams in protest as the distance grows.
Pain lances through my chest, sharp and bright, like something tearing apart inside me. The tether between us stretches taut, straining, screaming against the separation.
I curl into myself on the bed. Wrap my arms around my knees and press my face against my legs, trying to hold myself together while everything inside me tears apart.
The fever keeps climbing. Sweat soaks the sheets beneath me. My heart pounds so hard I can feel it in my teeth.
This is where I usually black out. My conscious mind retreats and my body takes over, does whatever it needs to survive. The red haze descends and I stop being Kess and become something else, something feral and mindless.
Except I'm not blacking out.
The bond is keeping me here. Keeping me aware. Refusing to let me escape into the darkness that's always been my refuge.
I have to feelallof it.
Hours pass. Maybe. I can't tell anymore. The fever just keeps building with no plateau in sight, no peak to crest and come down from. Just endless ascending spiral of need and rage and desperate, clawing want.
"Please." My voice is a whisper, my body taut and aching, my teeth chattering, tears streaming down my eyes. "Please... make it stop..."
A long, torturous silence.
Then.
Something crashes.
The door explodes inward—wood splintering, the lock tearing free with a screech of tortured metal. Hinges ripping loose from stone with sounds like breaking bones.
He's there.
Standing in the ruined doorway with his chest heaving and his eyes solid black. No gold left—just endless darkness, the beast fully in control. His claws are extended, curved and wicked, dripping with splinters. Every muscle taut with barely-contained violence.
