I brushed her hair from her face. “These were… extenuating circumstances. But Kaelith says your power is soothing.”
Meri looked up, eyes wide, lips trembling. “I felt her,” she whispered. “She’s even more beautiful on the inside.”
That caught me.
I tilted my head, frowning slightly as I reached for Kaelith across our bond.Do you know what she means by that?
Kaelith’s voice answered like silk wrapped in smoke.
Because she connected with my power. The girl is hiding her true strength. She does not need her instructors, not truly. She is the most powerful healer born in generations.
She can not only heal the body… but the soul.
My breath hitched.
A rare gift—so rare even dragons knew it by instinct. Meri didn’t just patch wounds… she brought people back from the edge of despair and death.
And she’d just saved one of ours.
Kaelith shifted beneath us, wings rising slightly as she adjusted her weight, but there was a stillness to her now, an alert, listening quiet that told me she was paying close attention.
Meri leaned against me, still pale but no longer trembling. I could feel her heart racing beneath her tunic, the aftermath of what she’d just done still rippling through her body.
“Why are you hiding it?” I asked quietly.
She looked up at me, startled.
“Your power,” I clarified. “Why pretend to be something smaller than you are?”
Meri hesitated, her fingers curling in her lap. “Because if the crown knew how powerful I really was… they’d take me. They’d assign me to the court, or the royals, or the warfront. I’d be used wherever I was most strategic. I’d never be allowed near Thrall Squad again.”
Kaelith stilled beneath us, her long neck coiling just slightly, her mind brushing against mine with steady approval.
I stared at Meri, heat prickling the backs of my eyes. “You may not be a rider, but you’re one of us.”
Her gaze dropped to her lap. “I don’t fit in with the other healers,” she whispered. “They talk about theory and ancient remedies. But Ifeelwhat someone needs. I see their hurt and… I just know how to fix it. And that’s not… normal.”
“It’s not,” I agreed. “It’s extraordinary.”
Meri blinked at me.
“You saved Jax’s life. You stood your ground in a warzone. I don’t care what robes you wear or where your tent is pitched. We are your family now.”
Meri’s eyes shimmered, and for a second, she looked like she might cry.
Then she smiled, just a little, and whispered, “Thank you.”
Kaelith let out a quiet rumble, low and approving.
And I knew deep in my bones that Meri didn’t just belong with us.
She was meant to be here.
Chapter
Fourteen
The sound of wingbeats made my head lift sharply.
