Page 29 of Hunted By the Wraiths
Connected.
The roar wasn’t just in my head anymore. It was in his too. The same frequency. The same signal. Synchronized.
I collapsed against his chest. Careful of his wounds. Breathing hard. Shaking.
His arms came around me. Gentle despite the claws. Protective despite the pain he had to be in.
The bond hummed. Steady now. Not roaring. Just present. A constant thread connecting us.
I waited for the pain to slam back into him. For the conditioning to reassert itself. For the gray to flood back over the emerald.
It didn’t.
The emerald held. Muted. Softer than the blazing color during our joining. But there. Real. Permanent.
“How bad?” I asked against his chest.
“Six.”
Six. Down from twenty. Down from the impossible numbers he’d been hitting.
“The bond pain?”
“Muted.” He sounded dazed. Awed. “It’s not gone. But it’s not screaming anymore. It’s just... an ache. Not a fresh wound.”
I pulled back to look at him. His scales were still emerald. Not pure. Streaks of gray remained, like scars across the color. Battle damage from eight years of war.
But the war was over.
The conditioning had lost.
“We did it,” I said.
“You did it.” His hand came up to cup my face. His thumb traced my cheekbone. “Your half of the bond broke their conditioning. The healthy part overwhelmed the damaged part.”
“Our bond.”
“Yes.” He smiled. Small. Exhausted. Real. “Ours.”
I should move. Should check his wounds. Should assess the damage from what we’d just done.
I didn’t move.
I stayed pressed against him, his cock softening inside me, his scales warm against my skin. The bond hummed between us. Steady. Sure. Right.
“I can feel you,” I said. “In my head. Not your thoughts. Just... you.”
“Same.” His hand moved to the back of my neck. Held me close. “You’re a constant presence.”
“Is it awful?”
“No.” He kissed my forehead. “It’s home.”
The word landed. Home. I’d built an empire. A cantina. A network. All of it designed to fill the hole he’d left.
None of it had worked.
Because home wasn’t a place. It was him.
