The kitchen light buzzed faintly overhead, a counterpoint to the silence that fell between us again. I waited, somehow knowing he wasn't finished.
"What happened earlier," he said after a long moment. "With Trux. The Hesolga." He took a breath, hands spreading flat against the table. "It wasn't just panic or rage. Hesolga is... primal. Ancestral. His human and raccoon natures are ripping him apart about the bond." His fingers curled inward, nails scraping against the tabletop. "He's running out of time. Soon I won't be able to bring him out of it."
"I know," I said, the words barely audible. I needed to mate and claim both Kearan and Ryker, but Kearan was so distant, so damaged. And Ryker… we'd tried, and it failed.
Kearan nodded, a single sharp movement. "You should try again…" He looked down at his hands, turning them palm-up as if reading something written there. "With Ryker," he swallowed hard. "It should work this time."
Ryker… I couldn't. Not yet. Between the two of them, Kearan would probably be the more open to mating. "How long will this affect you?"
"I take all of it," he finished. "The fear. The rage. The physiological response. It floods my system instead of his." For the first time, his eyes met mine directly. "My body has to process what his couldn't handle."
"Jeez, Kearan." The words escaped before I could stop them. "No wonder you looked like death after."
Something flickered across his face… not quite amusement, but adjacent to it. "It passes. Usually within a few hours. My system adapts. Neutralizes the foreign elements."
"Usually?" I pressed, unable to stop myself.
His gaze dropped to the table again. "Usually."
Silence fell between us, thicker than before. I watched him breathe… the careful rise and fall of his chest, the tension he carried in his shoulders even now. He'd given me pieces of himself tonight, small fragments of truth I knew had cost him. But there was still something he was holding back. Something that weighted his words with meaning beyond what he was willing to say outright.
My eyes drifted to his arm, to the burn scar partially visible beneath the edge of his sleeve. The scar he touched when he thought no one was watching. When he was absorbing someone else's pain.
"Will you tell me about the scar?" I asked, my voice gentler than I'd intended. Not a demand. Not even really a question. Just an opening, if he wanted to take it. I knew what happened, at least briefly, from what Grayson told me. But I wanted Kearan to open up.
He went very still, that particular stillness of prey that knows it's been spotted by a predator. For a long moment, I thought he wouldn't answer. That he'd retreat back into silence, pull the walls up again, reinforce the boundaries I'd just breached.
Instead, his right hand moved slowly to his left forearm, fingers hovering just above the scar tissue visible beneath his sleeve.
"I tried to heal someone," he said, each word pulled from him with visible effort. "Someone who... mattered to me." His voice dropped lower, barely audible now. "I knew I was past my limit. Knew I should stop. But she was still in pain, and I thought—" He broke off, jaw tight. "I thought I could handle just a little more."
My throat ached with the weight of his confession. "What happened?"
"The transfer became irreversible." He pulled up his sleeve, revealing the full extent of the scar… an intricate pattern of burn tissue that spiraled from wrist to elbow, like lightning captured beneath his skin. "Once it starts, the energy has to go somewhere. It can't just... stop. It has to complete the circuit." His fingers traced the edge of the scar, almost reverently. "When I couldn't channel it safely anymore, it manifested physically. Burned from the inside out."
I stared at the scar, seeing it with new eyes. Not just an old injury. Not just a reminder of pain. A physical manifestation of love pushed too far. Of sacrifice without limit.
Then I realized what he had said. She. It hadn't been Grayson. There had been someone else.
"Who was it?" I asked so softly it barely disturbed the air between us.
He shook his head once, sharp and final. That was a line he wouldn't cross. Not tonight. Maybe not ever.
"The burn is permanent," he said instead. "Proof of what happens when love and power mix without a ceiling." His mouth twisted into something that wasn't quite a smile. "A reminder to be more... careful."
I sat with his words, turning them over in my mind. The scar was a warning… but also a badge of honor. Evidence of how far he would go for someone he loved. What he was willing to sacrifice.
"Does it still hurt?" I asked finally.
He considered the question with the same deliberate care he seemed to give everything. "Yes," he said simply. "Always. But not in the way you think."
I nodded, understanding more than he'd actually said. Physical pain fades. Memory doesn't. Whatever had happened… whoever he'd tried to heal… the real wound wasn't in his arm.
"I think," I said carefully, measuring each word, "that sometimes we hold on to pain because it's the only thing left of something that mattered. Like if we let the pain go, we're letting that person go too."
His head came up sharply, eyes meeting mine with an intensity that stole my breath. I'd struck closer to home than I'd intended.
"And if I did?" he asked, voice rough. "Let it go. What then?"
