Page 14 of Hunted By the Wraiths
The pain overloaded every nerve, wiping all thought. Copper taste flooded my mouth. My scales tried to shift, locked, tried again. Failed again. The agony was total. Overwhelming.
Forced myself still. Didn’t pull away. Didn’t let the pain show beyond the involuntary scale flickering and the tension that locked every muscle. She needed this. Needed to touch. Needed to confirm I was real and alive and here.
Could give her that much. Could endure.
Her thumb traced along my jaw. Gentle. Exploring. Breathed through it. In. Out. Controlled. Functional. Still functional.
“Your scales,” she said quietly. “They’re trying so hard. I can see it. Trying to turn that deep emerald. The color I remember.”
“Can’t.” Words ground out past clenched teeth. “Locked. Experiments. They—” Stopped. Tried again. “They burned the bonded pattern out. Left the gray. The prison color. Can’t shift properly anymore.”
“I’m sorry.” Her hand was still on my face. Still causing agony. Still worth it. “So sorry they did this to you.”
“Not your fault.”
“I know. Still sorry.”
But her hand was on my face and I’d survived worse. Could survive this.
She leaned closer. The bond screamed recognition. Screamed completion. Screamed mine and home and now.
My body responded before my brain could override the stupidity. Hand reached up, caught hers, held it against my face. Contact. More contact. Pain spiked again but the bond sang underneath it. Recognition. Connection. Finally.
“Thoryn—” Her voice shook slightly. “You’re shaking.”
“Pain.” Simple explanation. True. “Manageable.”
“That’s not manageable. That’s?—”
“Worth it.” Interrupted her. Needed her to understand. “You. Here. Real. Worth any amount of pain. All of it. Don’t care.”
She stared at me. Something shifted in her expression. The guilt fractured. Something else showed through. Something that looked like the Maris I remembered from all those years ago. Before the empire. Before the walls.
“You’re an idiot,” she whispered.
“Loving Maris Elen made me an idiot. Still worth it.”
Her breath caught. The statement landed. Couldn’t take it back. Didn’t want to.
Then I kissed her.
Contact. My mouth on hers. Sudden. Desperate. All that absence and loss compressed into one moment. The bond exploded. Pain and pleasure and recognition all tangled together until I couldn’t separate them.
Didn’t care. This was worth it.
She kissed me back, hungry, and my hand moved to her neck, careful of pressure, just holding. Anchoring. Real. She was real and here and kissing me like she’d forgotten how to breathe and I was oxygen.
Her hands moved to my chest. Gentle. Exploring. Finding the new scars I’d earned in captivity. Tracing them. Learning them. Years of damage mapped under her fingertips.
The scales across my whole body tried to shift. Desperate biological imperative. Complete the bond. Claim the mate. Transform. Now.
They flared. For one perfect second, I felt them turn. Felt the emerald wash over gray. Felt whole. And I knew why. It wasn’t just me anymore. It was her. Her side of the bond, clean and strong, slamming into the corruption and overpowering it for that one instant.
Then the conditioning slammed down.
White-hot agony exploded through every nerve. My entire nervous system seized. The scales locked halfway, trapped between transformation and prison gray, and the pain was worse than anything they’d done in the labs. Worse than the suppressor collar. Worse than the sensory deprivation. Worse than the forced combat trials.
This was the experiment working exactly as designed. The bond trying to complete. My body punishing me for trying.
