“No,” I agree. “It wasn’t.”
What she did wasn’t healing. It wasn’t some soft glow of restoration. It was pure force: jagged and raw, detonating inside my chest like a bomb made of magic and will.
For a moment, I existed outside myself—suspended above the scene, watching my own corpse sprawled on the ground while Nova poured everything she had into the hollow shell below. Her magic didn’t coax or persuade. It demanded. Commanded. Rebuilt me from the inside out, cell by cell, burning away what was broken and replacing it with something harder. Stronger.
Then her power grabbed hold of whatever I’d become—soul, consciousness, essence—and hurled me back into flesh and bone like a missile finding its target. The impact was brutal. No gentle slide back into consciousness. No choice in the matter.
One moment, I was floating, detached.
The next, I was gasping—back arching off the ground, lungs expanding like I’d been underwater for minutes. My heart slamming against ribs that felt newly forged. Every nerve ending on fire with the memory of dying and the shock of living again.
I can still taste it—that moment when her power crashed through my stopped heart and kickstarted it with violence instead of tenderness. Like she grabbed my soul and shoved it back into place, not caring if it fit the same way.
I close the distance between us. “You didn’t just save me. You changed me.”
Nova doesn’t retreat. Her scent fills my lungs—that wild honey and citrus now threaded with something sharper. Something that matches the new current running under my skin.
“You feel it,” she says.
“Every second.”
Her eyes drop to my chest, to where my heart now beats with a rhythm that echoes her magic. When she looks back up, the gold flecks in her violet eyes pulse like tiny suns.
“You’re not the only one,” she says.
Her hand rises. Hovers in the space between us. I can see the tremor in her fingers. Barely perceptible, but it’s there.
When she finally touches me, her fingers curl around my wrist—right over my pulse point. Not gentle. Not rough. Just certain.
Her grip tightens. I don’t pull away.
Her breath catches. So does mine.
Chapter 42
Nova
His pulse races beneath my fingers. I feel him—not just physically, but on a level that defies explanation. Something primal. Ancient. Mine.
When I look up into his eyes, the change steals my breath. Those steel-gray irises I’ve come to know are now burning gold around the edges, bright and impossible.
“Dane,” I whisper, and his name feels different in my mouth. Sacred.
He doesn’t speak, just watches me with those transformed eyes. His broad shoulders rise and fall with each breath, the ash-brown hair falling in slight disarray across his forehead. Battle-scarred skin stretched over hard muscle. Every inch of himradiates power, but it’s different now—refined, concentrated, like lightning trapped in flesh.
I step closer. Heat radiates from him, making my skin prickle with awareness. When my palm presses against his chest, I feel it—the echo of my magic inside him, twisted with something ancient that was always there, sleeping in his blood.
“I felt you die,” I say. “I felt you stop.”
His hand covers mine, pressing it harder against his heart. “And I felt you drag me back.”
When he leans down, I rise to meet him. Our lips touch—not in hunger or desperation like before, but in recognition. In claiming.
Mate.
The word blooms in my mind, unfurling like truth. This pull between us was never just desire. Never just convenience or survival. It was this—this primal, unbreakable bond that survived death itself.
His eyes darken as he looks at me, gold giving way to black, pupils blown wide with lust.
