When Layla woke, the world was quiet.
Light seeped around the curtains, pale as milk, the distant crash of the sea as gentle as a whisper. Linen rasped under her fingers when she flexed, her body answered with a chorus of aches, and she bit back a groan.
She turned her head and found Dominic.
He had fallen asleep in a chair pulled close to the bed, boots on the floor, forearms braced on his thighs, head bowed. His shirt hung open at the throat, revealing a smear of dried blood he’d missed, a spray of bruises across his ribs. Someone had cleaned most of him up, and his shifter healing had taken care of most of the wounds. Despite that, there was a dark shadow over his jaw where stubble had grown in overnight. He looked exhausted and impossibly alive.
Her chest pulled tight. The memory returned in flashes, white roaring down the mountain, the howl that ripped from his chest, the wild, terrifying beauty of it, and the feel of his fur under her hands as he ran.
“Dom,” she whispered.
He was on his feet in a heartbeat, sleep burned off like mist. “Layla.” His voice was raw. Relief split him open; she could see it happen. He leaned over the bed. “How do you feel?”
“Like I wrestled a mountain and lost,” she said, attempting a smile. “Where are we?”
He paused a beat. “My house. The Anchor’s chaos at the moment, and I needed somewhere safe for you, somewhere the others could also find me—”
“How long?” She pushed up on her elbows, the room tilted and steadied.
“Almost a day.”
She blinked. “A day?”
He managed a wry tilt of his mouth. “You did try to bring down a mountain with your bare hands.”
Memory knifed through her, the surge of power leaving her body, the way it had torn at her, beautiful and unbearable. She swallowed. “It didn’t work. Not enough.”
He sank back onto the edge of the chair, close enough that she could see pale chips of silver in his eyes. “It worked enough to weaken it,” he said quietly, “and then…” his gaze dropped to his hands, flexing once. “Then I finished it.”
“You howled,” she said, the words reverent despite the rasp in her throat. “I’ve never heard anything like it.”
His eyes lifted to hers, wary. “Does it frighten you?”
She let the question sit a moment, testing her own heart. “It doesn’t,” she said. “It…felt right. Like it was meant to be you.”
He exhaled, slow. The muscles at the corner of his jaw unclenched. “I didn’t know I could do it. It came from deep in my chest. The other day, when I collapsed…I think that was it, waking up. My gift from Lunarion.”
She sucked in a breath. “Your gift? Doesn’t that mean…”
He didn’t reply, just fixed her with a warm, steady, intense gaze that stole her words away.
Silence settled, welling and warm. The fire popped. Street noise drifted faintly, the clatter of a cart, gulls arguing over fish guts somewhere down by the docks. The ordinary world, returning.
“Layla,” his voice gentled, “don't do that again.”
She laughed despite herself. “Which part? Running into a war? Or attempting a questionable spell on a mountain during a storm?”
“Yes,” he said, with the first intact hint of humor she’d heard from him in days. It faded. “You collapsed. I thought—” he stopped, swallowed, “I thought I was going to lose you.”
He sounded so raw then, an exposed nerve, an open book.
She’d never seen him like this.
“I’m sorry,” the words tumbled out before she could stop them. “I’m sorry about all of it. The magic, the lies,everything. I wish I could take it all back. I never wanted to hurt you.”
He shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. I never should have talked to you like that. I never should have made you feel like…like you couldn’t come to me. It’s my fault.”
“It’s not,” she said, reaching for his hand, “it’s pack law. I knew what I was doing when I broke it.”
