Why is my body doing this?
Movement across the shelter jolts me back. Allon shifts his weight.
My reaction is instant. Pure instinct. I drop into a crouch. Hands up. Wolf so close to the surface that my vision flickers.
“Don’t,” I warn.
He stops. Doesn’t retreat. Doesn’t advance. Just stands there, hands loose at his sides. Then he raises his wrists. Holds them out. Palms up. Offering.
I don’t understand.
“What—?”
“You’ll probably feel better if you cuff me again,” he says. His voice is quiet. Careful. No mockery. No superiority. Just an observation delivered like he’s trying not to spook something wild.
I stare.
Bullshit!
This is a trick. Has to be. Some strategy I’m not seeing yet.
Except—
I look at him closely for the first time since we broke apart. Blood trails down his shoulder from where my blade caught him.The slash is clean. Deep enough that it’s still weeping red despite his healing trying to close it.
Claw marks score his face. Four parallel lines from temple to jaw.Fuck!When did I do that? I don’t remember shifting. Don’t remember my nails lengthening.
But the evidence is there. His jacket is torn. Fabric shredded across his chest where a blade has ripped through. More claw marks, these ones catching on his shirt underneath, pulling it loose. Bruising darkens along his jaw. His lip is split. Blood dried at the corner of his mouth.
I did that. All of it.
My gaze drops to my own hands. I turn them over. Check my arms. Run fingers across my ribs where he’d grabbed me.
Nothing. Not a scratch. Not a bruise. Not even a red mark.
He’d blocked. Defended. Redirected my attacks. But he’d never struck back. Never used his strength. His weight. His lifetime of battle experience.
Why didn’t he kill me?
He could have ended it. Could have broken my arm when I lunged. Crushed my throat when we grappled. Put his knife through my ribs in any of a dozen openings I gave him.
He didn’t.
The realization sits wrong. Doesn’t fit with anything I know about him. About dragons. About men who rise to tactical commander in the Syndicate.
“Why?” The question escapes before I can stop it.
“Why what?”
“You didn’t—” I gesture vaguely. At myself. At him. “Kill me. You could have.”
“Yes.”
“So why didn’t you?”
He’s quiet for a while. Then: “I don’t know.” The honesty in those three words shakes me more than any blow he didn’t deliver.
I should call him a liar. Assume manipulation. See this as a strategy: make the target think you’re not a threat so she drops her guard. But I’ve been hunting predators for long enough to know truth when I hear it.
