I'd felt it during the initial activation—that explosion of lightning and sensation, the way our emotions had crashed together. But this was different. This was constant. A hum beneath my consciousness like background music I couldn't turn off.
Even when Zephyron wasn't in the room, I could feel him. Not his thoughts—the bond wasn't telepathy, didn't give me access to his mind. But I knew where he was in the citadel. Could track his movement through the building like he was a bright point on a map only I could see.
In his study somewhere above me. The awareness came without effort, without concentration. Just knowledge that sat in my brain alongside my own location.
I could feel his emotional state, too. The steady focus that meant he was working on something technical. The way that focus sharpened into problem-solving intensity when he hit a complication. Brief flashes of satisfaction when he solved it.
And underneath everything, constant and unwavering—protectiveness. Directed at me. So fierce it made my eyes sting.
On the third day, I woke to find him sitting in a chair he'd pulled beside my bed. He was reading a technical manual, holding it one-handed while the other hand sketched notes on a pad of paper balanced on his knee. Electricity danced absently between his fingers, tiny arcs that moved in time with his thoughts.
Through the bond, I felt his awareness of me even though he didn't look up. He knew I was awake.
"You don't have to watch over me," I said quietly.
"I know." He turned a page. "But I want to."
The simple statement hit harder than it should have. Want, not obligation. Not duty. Not because the bond compelled him or because I was his responsibility now.
Just want.
I watched him work—the precise movements of his hands, the way he occasionally muttered under his breath when a calculation didn't come out right, the small satisfied noise when it did. His presence was grounding. Real. Proof that this wasn't some fever dream I'd constructed while dying in the Thornback Woods.
"Can't sleep?" His storm-gray eyes finally lifted to meet mine.
"Can't believe this is real." The admission slipped out before I could stop it.
Through the bond, I felt his understanding. His certainty wrapping around me like armor.
"It's real," he said quietly. "You get to keep it."
By the third evening, my body had transformed enough that I could feel the difference in my bones. Literally. My muscles felt denser, stronger, despite three days of bed rest. When I stood—carefully, testing my weight—my legs held without shaking. My back pulled but didn't scream.
I caught my reflection in the mirror. Still too thin, still marked with scars and bond patterns, but my skin had lost that gray exhaustion. My eyes looked brighter. Sharper. The storm-gray that matched Zephyron's hair.
That's when I noticed the other change. The one that made heat flood my face.
I was aware of him. Not just through the bond, not just the knowledge of his location and emotional state. Physicallyaware. My body tracked him when he entered a room. My pulse quickened when he came close. When his hand brushed mine while passing me food, electricity sparked—literal and metaphorical both.
The cult had trained physical desire out of me. Had taught me to see my body as a vessel for spiritual service, its wants irrelevant and distracting.
But whatever they'd buried was waking up.
I thought about how his hands had looked shaping lightning in the plaza. How his dragon form had felt beneath me during the flight, all power and control. How his voice sounded when he called me "good girl" and made something hot and liquid move through my core.
I thought about these things and my body responded with intensity that shocked me.
This wasn't the distant curiosity I'd felt watching him in the plaza. This was want. Sharp and immediate and disorienting.
On the fourth morning, Zephyron knocked before entering—giving me privacy I hadn't asked for but apparently needed. He carried clothes draped over his arm. Soft pants and an oversized shirt in storm-cloud gray.
"Time to get up properly," he said. "You're healed enough. And we have work to do."
Thediningroomwassmaller than I expected. Intimate. A table barely big enough for two, positioned near a glass wall that overlooked the city. Morning light spilled across the surface, illuminating plates arranged with almost artistic precision—bread torn into pieces, cheese cut into perfect cubes, fruit sliced and fanned, vegetables steamed until they glistened.
Zephyron pulled out a chair for me. Not across from him—beside him. Close enough that our knees almost touched when we sat.
"The cult taught you to see food as purely functional," he said, settling into his own chair and turning to face me. "Measured portions. Scheduled consumption. Nothing about pleasure or enjoyment or the simple act of tasting something because it's delicious."
