He needed life. He needed an anchor. He needed someone to pull him back from wherever he’d gone.
He needed the bond.
I’d read about Roc mating bonds in his library. A week ago, when I was still pretending I wasn’t falling in love with him. The texts were clinical. Dry. Magical resonance. Permanent soul-links. Biological imperatives of the species.
They said nothing about a woman who’d known a monster for less than two weeks looking at his unconscious body and thinking: Yes. Him. Whatever it costs. Whatever it means. Him.
I pulled off my boots first. Practical. Then my jacket, still dusty from my uncle’s house. The buttons of my shirt came next, one by one, fingers steadier than I expected.
The air was cool on my bare skin. I shivered, but not from cold. From the weight of what I was about to do. The permanence of it.
He’d told me I should be sure.
I climbed into the nest beside him, pressing myself against the furnace of his body. Even dying, he ran hotter than any human. The warmth soaked into my bare skin, into my bones, into the cold places I’d been carrying for my entire life. He smelled like wind and high places and something wilder underneath, something that made the animal part of my brain want to curl closer.
“Tavrin.” I said his name like a summons. “I need you to hear me.”
Nothing. His chest rose and fell. His eyes stayed closed.
“You told me the bond was permanent. You told me I should be certain before we did this.” I found his hand, laced my fingers through his. His fingers didn’t curl around mine. They just lay there, fever-warm, unresponsive. “I’m certain. I’ve been certain for days. I just didn’t have the words for it.”
His breathing stayed shallow. The pause between heartbeats stretched longer.
“You organize books by how much I love them.” My voice cracked. I let it. “You want to know why?” I pressed my forehead to burning skin. “A life and no one looked at me without weighing what I could do for them. My uncle saw a ledger-keeper. Sorley saw a body to use. Even the people who were kind, they were kind because I was useful. Because I made their lives easier.”
His eyes flickered. Still unfocused. But listening.
“You built a nest around me while I slept, with the astronomy text angled toward the morning light because I mentioned once, once, that I liked the star charts.”
A sound from his throat. Not a word. Acknowledgment.
“That’s not instinct. That’s not biology. That’s you, Tavrin. You, choosing me, in every way you knew how. Seeing me. Not what I could do. Me.” I kissed his cracked lips, tasting fever anddesperation. “Do you know how long I’ve waited for someone to see me?”
His hand twitched against mine. The faintest pressure of fingers trying to hold.
“So I’m choosing you back. Right now. Are you listening?”
Nothing.
I kissed him.
His lips were dry. Cracked from fever. He didn’t respond, didn’t move, didn’t breathe any differently. I kissed him anyway. Soft. Patient. Trying to pour everything I felt into the press of my mouth against his.
Please, I thought. Please come back. Please don’t leave me alone in this world I just escaped into.
A sound.
Low. From deep in his chest. Not quite a word. Not quite a moan. Something between.
His fingers twitched against mine.
“Tavrin?”
“Wren.” A breath. Barely audible. My name shaped by lips that could hardly move.
“I’m here.” I kissed his jaw. His neck. The place where his pulse fluttered weak and thready. “I’m here. I’m staying right here. I need you to come back to me.”
His eyes opened. Just a sliver. Gold, bright gold, but glazed. Unfocused. Looking at me without quite seeing.
