We reach another narrow shelf. I drag myself up and onto it, chest heaving, sweat mixing with grit on my face. I scramble to the wall, making room for him. He comes over the edge a heartbeat later, wings snapping once to balance as he stands.
I want to sag against him, to let the shaking in my limbs show, but I don’t. I press to the wall, gulping air, fighting for control. Then a sound tears through the canyon.
I glance at him, expecting to see the same calm, the same steady focus. But his eyes flick to the rock above—and then, just for an instant, narrow with strain. His claws dig deep into the stone, holding more than just himself.
And then I realize the shelf isn’t solid as a fissure cracks down the center. Dust sifts loose as the ledge crumbles beneath his weight.
“Go,” he orders, but the edge of it is sharper and less controlled.
I move without thinking, scrambling higher, fingers catching another hold. When I dare to look down—he isn’t following.
The stone beneath his feet shears away in a slow, terrible break. His weight causing it to happen faster. He digs his claws into the wall, lochaber strapped tight across his back, wings flaring to brace himself, lighten his weight, but the ledge buckles anyway and drops out from beneath him.
“No!” My voice tears raw from my throat.
I don’t think. I reach out and catch his wrist as the shelf gives way, the rock dropping into the void below. The shock wrenches through my whole body. My shoulder screams in pain, my bandage splits, blood seeps hot down my arm. My grip slips, but I don’t let go.
His black eyes lock on mine, wide with a flash of something raw—surprise, maybe, or the sharp sting of being caught when he should have fallen. His claws flex once, not to break my grip but to anchor in it.
I brace my boots against the rock, veins straining, arm screaming, gusts of wind trying to tear us apart.
“I’ve got you!” The words are a ragged scream, carried on wind and blood and everything I am.
And I do. Somehow, impossibly, I do.
He heaves upward, muscles surging, and together we drag ourselves up. He uses his claws, taking back his own weight. We’re close to the top, but not there yet. Reaching another ledge, arms trembling, I strain to pull myself over the lip. He puts one hand on my ass, and I swear all the blood in my body rushes to that point of contact, warming and distracting. I get over the lipwith his help, dropping flat the moment I do, breathless, every muscle exhausted.
He comes over and lands half on top of me, pinning me against the stone, his chest heaving against mine.
For a long breath, neither of us move. Despite the danger, his weight pressing onto me is all that I want. Need. Desire.
The scrape rises from below, reminding us we’re still hunted. Still, all I feel is the press of him, the tremor of his chest, the weight of his body. For a moment our eyes lock, and there is no mistaking the fire in his.
Passion.
For me.
The world narrows to his weight pressing onto me, to the sharp scent of him—steel, stone, something that doesn’t belong to humans at all. My chest heaves against his, every breath shallow, quick, almost panicked, though not from fear.
His scars drag faint lines of roughness against my cheek. One hand braces on the stone beside my head, claws sunk into the rock as though he’s pinning not just me but the whole world beneath him. His body trembles with the exertion of the climb, but beneath it there’s coolness, solid and alive, a power that feels like it could swallow me whole.
I should push him off. The scrape echoes faintly from below, the winds rage around us. Survival is seconds away from being ripped out of our hands again. And yet?—
He doesn’t move. His eyes burn into mine, black and endless, drinking in every ragged gasp, every tremor of my body beneath his. My lips part, soundless. The taste of sand clings to mytongue, but beneath it, I swear I can taste the moment itself—raw, unguarded, breaking open between us.
His hand shifts. Not away, but a fraction closer. The tips of his claws graze the fabric at my hip. The gentle scrape makes my stomach clench, a low coil of heat winding through me so sudden it steals my breath.
“You saved me.”
The words are rough, torn low from his throat, almost as if admitting them costs him something. His gaze never wavers, and I feel the weight of truth in every syllable. My pulse hammers so hard it hurts.
“I—”
The words falter. I don’t know what to say. That I had no choice? That I couldn’t bear to let him go? That somewhere in the chaos of storm and stone, I’ve come to need him in ways I don’t dare name?
The truth is in my trembling hands. In my strained and aching muscles where I caught him. The truth is in the blood drying on my sleeve.
“I wasn’t letting you fall.”
