All of it seeping through the bond.
He nudges Tempest forward, still swaying in the saddle.
“If the worst happens…” his voice is rough, uneven. “If all I’ve got left is enough to distract them—you don’t look back.”
My throat tightens. “No.”
“You have to.”
“I won’t,” I say, voice breaking. “I can’t.”
His jaw tightens, anger flashing then fading just as fast.
“Can’t live without you,” he mutters. “That’s why they target mates.”
The words land heavy between us.
“But you’re human,” he adds, quieter now. “You could go on.”
“I won’t,” I say again. “So we find another way.”
Silence stretches.
I press closer, holding him as tightly as I can.
“We’re stronger together,” I whisper. “That’s all I know.”
His breath shudders, then stills.
“I’m nearly two centuries old, and this is the first time I’ve ever seen one… apart from my father. What if they come back?”
That’s when I realize I’m feeding his worry. That this bond has taken from both of us… made us vulnerable to loss, to our shared thoughts in a way I can’t comprehend.
I press tightly against him, squeezing my eyes shut. Wetting his back with my tears. “There has to be a way.”
The edge of the fear softens. It isn’t gone but dulled.
I feel it as clearly as I felt everything else between us. I look past him again. “And what wedid… the bracelet, the dampener,us. It worked.”
Kael goes still.
“More to it than that,” he says after a moment. “If they’d wanted us dead, I couldn’t have stopped them. But they weredifferent. Watching. ”
“Watching what?”
“Us. How we moved. How we answered.” His gaze drifts, not quite settling on anything in front of him. “How we hold together.”
A chill works its way through me. “Jo and Ash,” I murmur. “We need to talk to them.”
“Ifwe go back.”
The words land heavier than he intends.
I feel it through the bond—his resistance, still there, even now. But above all else is the hurt, the panic.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” I whisper against his back.
“That this is why I never wanted to bond with you… because my heart will never be truly mine again. And if anything ever—” His voice cracks.
