My focus has already shifted back to the cottage. The bond remains unstable. Fear continues to ripple through the tether, raw and uncontrolled in ways that feel dangerously close to the surge that destroyed Garruk in the alley.
The realization settles with cold clarity as I move. When she wakes abruptly from fear, her mind has no time to control the reaction. Terror reaches the bond before reason can intervene. Which means this will happen again. Unless I change the rules.
I step through the broken window. Elowen stands near the center of the room, her breathing uneven as moonlight spills across the scattered glass around her feet. The fear in her expression shifts immediately when she sees me emerge from the darkness.
Relief arrives so suddenly through the bond that it nearly steals the anger from my chest.
“Threxian,” she whispers.
I cross the room in two strides.
“Easy,” I murmur as I reach her.
Her hands are trembling. The sight sends another surge of wrath through my veins, but I force it down with deliberate control. Violence has already been answered tonight. Now she requires something else.
My arms close around her before she can protest. For a moment she stiffens in surprise, clearly not expecting the contact, but the resistance fades quickly as the reality of the night settles around her. Her forehead presses lightly against my chest.
I can feel the frantic rhythm of her heartbeat through the thin fabric between us, fast and uneven in the wake of the shock that tore her from sleep. My hand continues its slow path along her back, careful and steady, the same motion one might use to calm a frightened animal that does not yet trust its surroundings again. The bond responds immediately to the contact, the wild surge of infernal heat settling into something quieter as her breathing begins to follow the rhythm I set. Each slow inhale she manages pulls the chaos inside the tether back toward control, and with every passing moment the urge to burn the entire village to ash recedes just a little further.
“Breathe,” I say quietly.
Her voice trembles against my chest.
“I tried.”
“I know.”
The words leave me with surprising gentleness.
“You woke suddenly,” I continue. “Your body reacted before your mind could steady the bond.”
Her fingers curl lightly into the fabric at my side.
“I hate that this keeps happening.”
“It will not forever.”
“How do you know?”
Because I refuse to allow it. The answer remains unspoken. Instead I guide her breathing the same way I did the night before, my hand resting gently against her ribs as I slow the rhythm of her inhale.
“Follow me.”
Her breath shudders.
“In.”
Her chest rises beneath my hand.
“Hold.”
The bond reacts, heat pressing briefly against the edges of control.
“Out.”
The tension loosens slowly. We repeat the rhythm several times before her pulse begins to normalize again. When she finally lifts her head, her eyes search my face with lingering uncertainty.
“You felt it,” she says quietly.
