"No," I said. It cost me physical pain to say it. "Zia set the constraint. Lucidity. She wants to know what she's doing. She wouldn't want to do something irreversable because she was out of her mind with need."
"This isn't a contract!" Alfie hissed. "It's biology!"
"To her, it's the same thing," Euan said from the bed. He was stroking Zia’s hair, watching her sleep. "If we mark her while she is compromised by heat delirium, she will wake up and see a violation. She will see a debt she didn't agree to incur."
"She's begging for it," Alfie argued, tears leaking from his eyes. "She's begging us to claim her."
"And we're saying no," I said, reaching out to grip Alfie’s shoulder. "We're saying no because we love her more than we want to own her."
Alfie slumped against me. "It hurts. It physically hurts not to bite her."
"I know, mate," I whispered. "Furniture or wall. We hold the line."
The next wave hit twenty minutes later.
It was violent. Zia woke up screaming, her body bowing off the mattress. The heat had turned sharp, agonizing.
"Make it stop," she pleaded, thrashing as we scrambled to secure her. "It’s too much. It’s too bright."
"Alfie, high frequency," I barked. "Distract the nerves."
Alfie was on her in a second, using his hands, his mouth, his hair, creating a sensory overload to drown out the pain.
"Euan, ice," I ordered. "Base of the skull."
"Done," Euan said, cracking a cold pack.
I climbed over her, pinning her wrists to the mattress, not to restrain her but to give her something to fight against.
"Fight me," I growled, locking eyes with her. "Push back. Use the muscles. Ground the charge."
She fought. She bucked and clawed and screamed my name until her voice broke. We rode it out, hour after hour, shift after shift.
I lost track of time. The sun might have come up. It might have gone down again. The only clock was the rise and fall of her temperature.
My body ached in ways I didn't know were possible. My hips were locked, my throat raw, my skin sensitive from the constant friction of bodies and sheets. But every time she reached for me, I found a reserve tank.
"Kit," she whispered, her voice a ghost. "Talk me through it. Don't stop."
"I'm here," I rasped, finding the cadence again. "We’re on the downside of the slope, love. Gravity is doing the work. You just slide. I’ve got the brakes."
And then, it broke.
It wasn't a sudden snap like the start. It was a slow, sliding fade. The frantic, electric scent of ozone mellowed into a soft, sweet petrichor—the smell of rain after a storm. Her skin cooled.Her breathing shifted from the ragged panting of survival to the deep, rhythmic draw of sleep.
The tension in the room snapped.
Alfie collapsed face-first into the duvet, letting out a long, shuddering groan. Euan slumped against the headboard, his eyes closing, his hand sliding from her waist to the mattress.
I stayed where I was, curled around her back, my arm heavy over her ribcage. I waited. I counted the breaths. One hundred. Two hundred.
She didn't spike. She settled. She wiggled backward, seeking the heat of my chest, and let out a small, contented sigh that broke my heart and put it back together.
We were wrecked. The room smelled like a battlefield of pheromones. The sheets were destroyed. We were sweaty, sticky, dehydrated, and exhausted down to the atomic level.
I looked at Alfie. He was watching me from the pillow, one eye open.
"Did we survive?" he whispered.
