Her eyes searched his face. “What does it mean? Really?”
“It means you’re mine.” The words came out rougher than he intended—his beast pushing through, making its claim heard. He forced himself to soften his voice. “It means I chose you. That my beast chose you. That every instinct I have, every drive, every need is now oriented around protecting you, providing for you, making you happy.”
“That sounds... intense.”
“It is.” He squeezed her hands gently. “It doesn’t mean you have to feel the same way. Doesn’t mean you owe me anything. The bond is mine—my commitment, my choice. You’re free to?—”
She kissed him.
It was sudden and fierce and tasted like salt from her tears. Her hands came up to cup his face, pulling him closer, and for a long moment there was nothing in the world but the warmth of her mouth and the desperate need pouring through the connection between them.
When she finally pulled back, her eyes were bright.
“I don’t know what mating means for Vultor. I don’t know the rituals or the traditions or whatever formal process makes it official.” She traced her thumb along his cheekbone, over the scar that marked his face. “But I know that when I’m with you,I feel safe. I feel seen. I feel like I finally know what it means to belong to someone.”
“Liora—”
“I spent my whole life alone in this tower, reading about love in books and wondering if I’d ever experience it for myself. And then you climbed through my window with blood on your arm and questions in your eyes, and everything changed.” She smiled, trembling and radiant. “You changed everything, Baylin. And I don’t want to go back to the way things were. Not ever.”
He pulled her into his arms, holding her tight against his chest. His beast rumbled with satisfaction, with possessive joy, with the fierce certainty that this was right—that she was his and he was hers and nothing in the universe could change that.
“We’ll figure out the rest,” he murmured against her hair. “The rituals, the traditions, all of it. We have time.”
“Do we?”
“Yes.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Whatever ARIS decides, whatever happens next—we have time. I’ll make sure of it.”
She relaxed into him, her body softening against his as the tension of the last few hours finally began to drain away. Pip chirped approvingly from her lap, his tiny form nestled between them.
Outside the window, the sun sank below the horizon.
And somewhere in the depths of the tower, an artificial intelligence continued its calculations—weighing variables, analyzing scenarios, trying to find a path forward that would keep the woman it had raised safe while also setting her free.
He held her close and waited.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The words settled into Liora’s chest like warm honey, spreading through her veins until she felt incandescent with them.
His mate.
She’d read about Vultor mating bonds in the tower’s xenobiology texts—dry clinical descriptions of hormonal changes and behavioral modifications, statistical analyses of pair survival rates, observations about territorial instincts and protective behaviors. None of it had prepared her for this. For the way Baylin looked at her when he said the words, like she was the center of gravity around which his entire existence now orbited.
She pressed closer against him, her cheek resting over the steady rhythm of his heartbeat. Pip had fallen asleep in her lap, his small body rising and falling with contented breaths. Outside the observation window, stars were beginning to emerge in the darkening sky—pinpricks of light scattered across an endless canvas.
For a long moment, everything felt perfect.
Then ARIS spoke.
“Recalculation complete.”
Her breath caught. She felt him tense beneath her, his arm tightening around her shoulders.
“And?” she asked.
“The analysis has produced... complex results.”
The warmth in her chest began to cool. She’d heard that tone before—the careful neutrality ARIS adopted when it was about to deliver news it knew she wouldn’t like.
