Page 24 of Hunted By the Wraiths
“It’s the only idea.” I didn’t move my hand. Waited.
She shifted closer. Her hip pressed against my leg.
The bond pain spiked to thirteen. I hissed, a sharp intake of breath, but didn’t pull away.
“Thoryn—” she started, ready to move back.
“It’s not just pain,” I ground out, forcing the words. “I can feelyou. Your half. The thrum. It’s stronger.”
This was the part the scientists had missed. They’d never studied ahealthybond, only my broken one. They hadn’t anticipated her half of the equation.
“The emerald?” she asked, her voice quiet, remembering what she’d seen.
“More than that.” I looked at her. “It’s... a signal. Underneath their noise. It’s fighting for me.” I kept my hand outstretched between us. “I need you to fightwithme. I can’t... I can’t do it alone.”
This was the choice. Pain or home. Prison or her.
I’d already made it. I’d made it every day in that cell.
She pulled her legs up onto the cot. Settled in beside me. Not touching, but the heat from her body radiated across the small gap.
The pain climbed to fourteen. This was a terrible, monumentally stupid idea.
And it was the only thing that made sense.
My conditioning screamed. The thrum grew louder. Two signals fighting for dominance.
“Thoryn.” Her voice was quiet. Determined. “I won’t let them win. I won’t let them keep us apart.”
The thrum pulsed. Strong. Her bond calling to mine.
I chose her. I always chose her.
I reached across the last few inches and grabbed her hand, lacing my fingers with hers. Ignored the pain screaming at fifteen. Focused on the thrum, on the clean signal cutting through the noise.
She turned. Her other hand found my face. Her palm pressed against my jaw.
The scales under her touch flashed brilliant emerald. The thrum became a roar.
The pain hit sixteen. Numbers I’d never reached. Numbers that didn’t exist on any scale.
I kissed her anyway.
Her mouth was warm. Soft. Real. The bond exploded between us, the thrum flooding through every nerve, drowning out the conditioning’s screams.
The emerald spread. I could feel it racing across my scales. My real color. My bonded color. The color they’d burned away trying to break me.
The pain was at seventeen. Eighteen. Climbing past any reference point.
But the thrum was louder.
Her hands tangled in the scales at the back of my neck. Her body pressed against mine. The bond sang.
And underneath the agony, underneath the war, underneath eight years of conditioning and torture, I felt whole.
The Consortium had tried to break this. They’d failed.
We were still here. Still connected. Still choosing each other despite the cost.
