I swallowed. Took the water Malric held out next and drank without commenting on the fact that he was holding that too.
“What is that?” I asked when I could trust my voice.
“What is what?”
“That.” I pressed a hand flat against my sternum. “The feeling. Is it the bond?”
Malric and Thane went still in their different ways—Thane’s hands pausing on my shoulders, Malric’s expression shifting into something more focused.
“Describe it,” Malric said.
“Like a thread,” I said. “Except that’s not right. More like a presence. One that wasn’t there before and doesn’t hurt, but I’m aware of it.” I paused. “Two of them. In different places.”
Thane’s hands resumed their slow work. “Yes. That’s what the beginning of a bond feels like.”
“Beginning,” I said.
“It’s not formed,” Malric said. “Not fully. What you’re feeling is the potential of it.”
“Can it be stopped?”
Silence. Thane’s hands stilled again.
“It can be left incomplete,” Malric said carefully. “What happens next determines whether it sets or doesn’t.”
I thought about that. The water lapped softly against the stone. Outside the narrow window, the light had changed, afternoon tipping toward evening, the sky the pale gray of something deciding whether to turn dark.
“What happens next—what does that mean?”
Malric set down the food. He leaned back against his end of the basin, arms along the rim, and looked at me with the quality of attention he gave things he was trying to explain with precision.
“The spikes you’ve had. They’ve been your body moving toward heat in stages. Each one closer together than the last.” His jaw tightened slightly. “The next one won’t be a spike.”
I understood what he wasn’t saying. “A full heat.”
“Yes.”
I thought about what the book had said. I’d read the relevant sections three times, which was how I read things I wasn’t sure I understood. “I know what they involve.”
“Tell me what you know,” he said. Not a test. He was checking the source.
“They’re longer. More intense. Your body—” I stopped, recalibrated. “Your body needs more than proximity and touch to settle. Full relief requires penetration.” The clinical word helped. “Without it, the heat can last days. It’s physically exhausting. Potentially dangerous if prolonged.”
Thane made a quiet sound behind me.
“The book also said,” I continued, keeping my voice level, “that bonding often occurs during full heats. That the biological state makes the bond more likely to set.” I paused. “It said that’s not automatic. That consent and intent matter.”
“They do,” Malric said. “The bond doesn’t form against your will. But the heat makes it easier for it to happen, if that’s what you want.”
“So if we—” I stopped. Started over. “If a full heat happens, there’s a real possibility of a bond forming.”
“There is more to it than just participating in a heat,” Thane said quietly from behind me.
“We can help you through your heat without bonding you. The thread tells you that the potential is there. That we are potential soul-bonded mates. A bond requires bites to complete it. But it will only happen with your consent.”
I sat with that. It sounded painful and scary. I had just dealt with being under my father’s control and now I would go under someone else’s without really knowing them. Was I ready for that? The water was still warm, the tower still attending to its business of comfort, Thane’s hands resting now at my shoulders without pressure.
“I need to think about it.”
