Tur doesn’t look at any of it.
He looks at me.
The bond hits like a freight train.
Not a flare.
Not a hum.
A full-body impact that slams into my chest and drops straight into my bones, knocking the air out of my lungs and making my vision stutter as something incandescent and immense locks into place between us with a force that feels less like magic and more like gravity finally snapping into alignment.
My hands curl into fists at my sides because my knees try to give out.
“Tur,” I breathe.
My voice comes out wrecked and thin and real in a way I didn’t know I was capable of anymore.
He takes one step into the cell.
Then another.
Each one slow.
Deliberate.
Careful in a way that looks almost absurd on something that just tore through a small army.
The air around him feels wrong, charged and metallic, like the space right before a lightning strike, and my skin prickles all over as if my nervous system is trying to recalibrate around his presence.
He stops three feet away from me.
His chest is heaving.
His eyes are too dark.
Not feral.
Not lost.
Focused in a way that makes my throat tighten painfully.
His hands lift.
Hover.
An inch from my shoulders.
They’re shaking.
Not with adrenaline.
With restraint.
“Are you hurt,” he asks, and his voice is low and steady and wrecked in the middle like something cracked and never quite healed right.
I huff out a broken laugh that turns into a wince halfway through.
“Yeah. But I’m still vertical, which feels like a win under the circumstances.”
