Because her touch doesn’t feel like pity.
It feels like choice.
I shouldn’t feelthis way.
None of it makes sense. Not on paper. Not in scripture. Not under the laws carved into the oldest stones of my people.
I shouldn’twant. I shouldn’tfeel. I shouldn’t linger here, in her quiet heat, listening to the soft cadence of her breath.
But here I am.
She sleeps beside me, curled under the thermal blankets I folded around her like a promise. The storm outside thunders against the rock, wind scratching like claws in the night, but inside, it’s warm. Too warm, too easy. Her hair, strawberry-fire beneath the pale light, fans across the blanket. One arm drifts out, palm up like she’s still reaching for something in her dreams.
Her breathing is slow. Even. Peaceful.
I watch her for long moments before even thinking about what I’m doing.
Shouldn’t be watching.
But I am.
Her chest rises and falls, not with terror, not with tension, but with a calm that shouldn’t exist here — not after everything that’s brought us to this broken planet half-way between promise and death.
My claws flex against the stone floor, a reaction I don’t control. The air smells like sand and heat and her — an earthy sweetness I never expected to register in my bloodstream. My ears catch every little sound: the faint tick of the thermal blanket settling, her heartbeat singing slow under my awareness, the distant echo of sand grinding against the dome.
I tell myself I’m listening because of danger. Because storms can break in an instant. Because the world here is older than logic and twice as cruel.
But that’s not it.
It’sherheartbeat.
It thrum-thrum-thrums in the space between us, and I canfeelit like a pulse against my own — ancient, instinctive, and pulling at something deep beneath the scars, beneath the claws, beneath the hollow core I thought I’d locked away.
That word creeps unbidden into my mind — a whisper on bone:
Jalshagar.
I’ve not spoken it in years. Not since before exile. Not since the last time I lost something I swore I would protect.
Jalshagar.
It is more than desire. More than connection. It is a bond deeper than blood, older than rites, older than names.
I didn’tmeanto feel it again.
But I do.
I can’t not feel it.
Her breath shifts — just the slightest hitch — and I lean forward without realizing I’ve moved. It’s not predatory. Not hunting. Not fear. It’s… instinct. The same force that once drove warriors to stand side by side in ancient halls, sharing blood, stories, and fates.
I should not want this.
I should deny it. Reject it. Stamp it into the deepest crevice of myself and bury it under hardship and silence and solitude.
Iam notmeant to be bound to another.
Not like this.
