“That’s why she ran,” Malric said. Not a question.
“That’s why she’s in there, ashamed of something her body is doing without her permission, yes.” I looked back at the ceiling. “She’s not afraid of the heat. She’s afraid of what she believes she’ll do to us.”
Another sound through the door—quieter now, more controlled, the sound of someone working very hard to contain themselves. The thread between us pulsed once with it, warm and pained.
I exhaled slowly.
Malric unfolded his arms. He moved to the stairwell and paused there, his back to me. “I’m going down to the lower level.”
I looked at him.
“Distance will help,” he said. “My scent is—” He stopped. Started again. “Staying here is not making this easier for her. It’s not making it easier for me.” A pause. “You’re better at this than I am.”
The admission cost him. I didn’t point that out.
“I’ll be back before dawn,” he said. “If anything changes?—”
“I’ll call you.”
He descended. His footsteps faded below.
The corridor quieted.
Her scent was still present—would be present until the spike ran its course—but without Malric’s added to it, the quality of the air shifted. Still difficult. Still doing things to my instincts that I was managing one breath at a time. But different. Slightly less impossible.
I settled more fully against the door, adjusting the angle so my shoulder blade was against the wood rather than the center of my spine, and let myself become still in the way I had learned to become still on long watches—not passive, not absent, but settled. Present and patient.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said quietly, toward the wood. “You don’t have to respond to that. I’m just telling you.”
No sound from the other side.
“The thread between us—you may be able to feel it. I don’t know if you can. But I can feel you, faintly, and I want you to know that what you’re feeling—” I stopped. Considered what was true. “You have nothing to be ashamed of. This is all perfectly natural. It’s part of your biology as an omega.”
The tower hummed beneath us, slow and steady.
“What’s happening to you is not wrong,” I continued. “It’s not dangerous. It’s not evidence of anything except that you’ve been suppressed for a very long time and your body is trying to complete a process that was interrupted before it could finish.” A pause. “You haven’t hurt us. You’re not going to hurt us. I know you don’t believe that yet. That’s all right. We can be patient until you believe me.”
Silence from the other side. But the thread shifted—something in it softening, fractionally, the shame note not gone but less sharp.
I stayed where I was.
The hours moved the way hours move when you are waiting for something you cannot accelerate—slowly, and then in sudden jumps, time behaving strangely at the edges. The tower’sambient light didn’t change. I tracked time by the quality of the air, by the gradual shifts in her scent as the spike moved through its phases.
At some point, I became aware that the cramping quality had eased. The urgency had not gone—that would take longer—but the acute pain of it had reduced. Our connection felt more drained than desperate.
“Thane.” Her voice, quietly, through the door. The first time she had spoken in hours, beyond low cries.
I straightened. “Here.”
A long pause.
“It’s getting better,” she said. “The worst of it.”
“Good,” I said. Then, because it was true, “I’m glad.”
Another pause, shorter. “You didn’t leave.”
“No.”
