Page 41 of Ash and Burn

Forever.

The word ricocheted through her mind like a bullet. She grabbed her clothes from the floor with shaking hands, her movements sharp and desperate.

"Calix, that's a lot to ask. I have a life back on Earth, and we've only known each other for a short time." She paused, meeting his gaze and seeing the hurt in his eyes. "I don't know what to think right now. I need some space."

She was moving before he could respond, clutching her clothes and his sheet, fleeing toward the stairs. Behind her, she heard the rustle of sheets as he moved to follow.

"Arvid, wait. Don't leave⁠—"

But she was already running, taking the stairs two at a time, the sheet trailing behind her like a banner of retreat. She needed to change. Needed to get out of Ashspire. Needed air and space and distance from the suffocating weight of forever.

Once in her guest suite, she dropped the sheet and dressed with military efficiency—pulling on a navy skirt, white blouse, and boots laced tight enough to anchor her to something solid. Her hands shook as she grabbed her small bag with the datapad inside, but she forced them steady through sheer will.

Then she was moving again, down the grand staircase and through the front door of Ashspire, into the heat of Ashvorn. She walked fast toward the Hearthring district, her breath coming in short bursts that had nothing to do with exertion and everything to do with the panic clawing at her throat.

She knew she was supposed to have an escort. Calix was supposed to accompany her. But Calix was her problem right now, not her solution, and she needed distance from him more than she needed protection.

As she walked, the strangest thing happened though. Emotions that weren't hers flickered through her consciousness—fear, want, confusion, and hurt. They felt like echoes of her own feelings, but they weren't hers, they were his.

The realization stopped her cold in the middle of the pathway. Was this what the mate bond did? Made her feel his emotions as if they were her own? Made him feel her emotions too? Was that why he had been so attentive and so understanding? Because he could read her like an open book, her feelings transparent to him in ways she had never intended?

It would explain so much. The way he anticipated her needs. The way he seemed to see straight through her careful defenses. The way every interaction between them felt charged with an intensity that defied explanation.

But it also raised a more terrifying question. Was anything she felt for him real? Or was it all just the supernatural manipulation of a bond she couldn't control?

She thought about the shared meals, the quiet conversations, the moments when he had chosen her comfort over his own convenience. The way he had argued for her in the council chambers. The way he looked at her like she was the solution to every problem he had never known how to solve.

That couldn't be just a bond. The mate bond might amplify feelings, make them more intense, but it couldn't create something from nothing. The attentiveness, the patience, the care—that was Calix. The man who had spent fifteen years protecting everyone around him, who had learned to see what people needed and provide it without being asked.

Which means what if he really meant it when he said he chose her? What if this impossible, terrifying, soul-deep connection was exactly what it felt like—undeniably real?

The thought followed her all the way to the main medical building, where she pushed through the front doors like a woman trying to outrun the inevitable. Once in the lab, Dorn was already waiting at her workstation, and she set her bag down with hands that had finally stopped shaking.

He looked worried, his permanently tired eyes more creased than usual. "The tests came back on the ingredients."

She pulled her datapad from her bag, forcing her mind to shift into the familiar territory of scientific problem-solving. Work had always been her refuge when emotions became too complicated to navigate.

"What did you find?" she asked, trying to regain composure and focus.

"It appears the flameroot has toxins in it that were never there before."

Her eyes widened, the implications hitting her immediately. "So the flameroot was contaminated?"

"Exactly," Dorn replied, his expression grim.

Contamination meant source control. It meant finding where the flameroot grew and determining how the toxins had been introduced. It meant answers, finally, after days of frustration and dead ends.

"Then take me to where the flameroot grows," Arvid said firmly, her determination locking into place.

The walk to the flameroot fields stretched across undulating terrain that reminded Arvid of everything she found both beautiful and unsettling about Ashvorn. The volcanic soil crunched beneath their boots, dark red earth that pulsed with residual heat from the Caldran volcano's ancient fury. Steam rose from scattered vents, creating an otherworldly landscape that made her feel like she was walking across the surface of an alien planet—which, she supposed, she was.

Dorn moved with the steady pace of a man who had made this trek countless times, his weathered hands carrying sample containers and testing equipment. The silence between them felt comfortable rather than awkward, both of them focused on the task ahead rather than conversation. But Arvid's mind refused to stay focused on the investigation. Instead, it kept circling back to Calix's revelation, to the way his voice had roughened when he said "you are my fated mate," to the hurt that had flashed across his face when she fled.

The mate bond he had mentioned. She could feel it now more than ever, humming beneath her skin like a low-frequency vibration she couldn't ignore anymore. Emotions that weren't hers flickered through her—frustration, longing, and something deeper that felt like grief.

Was that what Calix was feeling right now?

The thought made her chest tight with guilt.