“You don’t have to fight it. Fighting makes it sharper.”
“What if it gets worse?” she asked.
“It might,” I admitted. “Heats can crest before they settle. But I’ll stay. We’ll keep you grounded. I won’t let you drown in it.”
Her gaze searched mine, as if looking for any crack in that assurance.
“And Malric?” she asked.
“He’s angry,” I said honestly. “Not at you. At what was done to you. He forgets sometimes that not everything needs to be confronted head-on.”
A faint, shaky exhale left her. The heat pulsed again, stronger now. Her fingers curled into the fabric of the nest, knuckles whitening.
“It hurts,” she said softly.
“I know,” I murmured. “Let it crest. I’m here.”
And as the warmth surged higher, as her body leaned toward mine without conscious permission, I kept my movements deliberate and slow, anchoring her with presence rather than possession—because this wasn’t about claiming.
It was about teaching her that she could survive her own awakening.
Chapter Ten
AVELINE
The heat burned me from the inside out.
Not the creeping warmth I’d learned to recognize. This was different. This was my body deciding, without consulting me, that it was done being patient. I came out of sleep gasping, already kneeling in the nest, my fingers twisted into the furs like I’d been trying to hold onto something and lost it anyway. The room seemed cramped. The sensation on my skin was wrong. It was overly sensitive, and the shift’s fabric felt like a constant irritant.
I didn’t hear Thane cross the room. The air changed when he entered it.
He stopped a few feet away.
“Tell me.”
“Worse than before.” My voice came out thin. “Don’t come closer.”
He ignored me.
Slow, unhurried, like I hadn’t just told him not to. He crouched in front of me and rested his forearms on his knees, and looked at me with that steady gray gaze that I was starting to understand meant he’d already made a decision and was waiting for me to catch up to it.
“You said that last time. You were wrong.”
The heat surged, rolling through my belly, pulling every muscle tight and dragging a sound out of me that I immediately wanted back. My thighs pressed together. My hands clenched harder in the furs. It wasn’t pain. I kept waiting for pain, kept bracing for the thing my father had always told me came next, and it never arrived. Just the ache. It was an intense, undeniable craving that felt less like a desire and more like a bodily necessity.
Thane watched me work through it without moving.
Then he lowered himself onto his knees.
The breath left my lungs. His large and sturdy build made him seem imposing when standing, but kneeling, he was at my eye level. The intentionality of his posture, the choice to kneel, had a profound effect on me.
“Breathe with me,” he said.
I tried. The first breath shook. The second followed the slow rise of his chest and held together better. The third steadied. The wave pulled back from its peak without breaking.
“Good.” He reached out and his hand settled at my jaw, warm and unhurried, thumb resting against my cheekbone. “When did you last let anyone touch you?”
“I don’t remember.”
