“It’s really not.”
For a moment, neither of them moved. Then Sylas exhaled—a sound that was almost a laugh—and pulled back just enough to look at her face.
“Move,” he said finally, his voice rough. “Before anyone else decides to test me tonight.”
They madeit to the surface.
Elsa barely remembered the climb—just Rowan’s hand on her elbow, Milo’s ragged breathing beside her, the Sabers forming a protective wall at their backs. The chaos of the fortress swirled around them, but somehow none of it touched her. She was wrapped in the bond now, feeling Sylas’s presence like a second heartbeat, knowing without seeing that he was behind her, that Vask and his assistant, Krix were handled, that something fundamental had shifted between them in that dark tunnel.
Mia and Ari were waiting at the extraction point, their faces pale with relief when they saw the others emerge. Someone pressed a blanket around Elsa’s shoulders. Someone else was speaking—Ryxin’s voice, she thought, sharp with questions she couldn’t parse through the ringing in her ears.
She found a wall and leaned against it, her legs finally giving out.
The swelling in her face throbbed in time with her pulse. Her lip was still bleeding sluggishly, the copper taste coating her tongue. Her ribs ached where she’d hit the ground, and her wrists were raw from the chain she’d used as a weapon. She’d fought Vask’s enforcer. She’d attacked him like a feral animal and tried to take him out with her own bindings.
By the Great Mother, what had she been thinking?
She hadn’t been thinking. That was the problem. The bond had flooded her with Sylas’s rage, and she’d drowned in it willingly—had let it reshape her into something that didn’t flinch, didn’t run, didn’t do anything except protect what was hers.
Hers.
When had that happened?
She felt him before she saw him—the bond pulling taut, that thread of heat and fury resolving into something more immediate. Sylas emerged from the fortress entrance with blood matting his fur and a darkness in his eyes that made everyone in his path step back.
Everyone except Elsa.
She pushed herself off the wall and met him halfway, her legs steadier than she’d expected. He stopped in front of her, close enough that she could see the fresh wounds across his shoulders, the shallow gash where Krix’s claws had found their mark. Close enough that his heat washed over her like a tide.
“You attacked him,” Sylas said. Not a question.
“He was going to use me as bait to try and—”
“He was going to try.” His claws found her face—gentle now, impossibly gentle, tracing the edge of the bruise blooming across her cheekbone. A growl built in his chest, low and pained. “He touched you.”
“And I touched him back.” She met his gaze without flinching. “With a chain around his throat.”
Something flickered in his expression—surprise, disbelief, and underneath it all, a hunger so raw it made her breath catch. “You could have died.”
“So could you.”
“That’s different.”
“No.” She reached up and covered his hand with her own, pressing his palm flat against her damaged cheek. The pain was sharp, grounding. Real. “It’s not. I felt you through the bond, Sylas. I felt your anger and pain. And I couldn’t—” Her voice cracked, and she hated herself for it. “I couldn’t just wait and watch.”
His other hand came up, cupping her jaw, tilting her face toward his. This close, she could see the gold flecks in his cyan eyes, the tension in his jaw, the way his chest heaved with breaths he was trying to control.
“You felt me,” he repeated, and his voice was rough, wrecked.
“Everything. Your rage. Your fear. Your—” She stopped, her cheeks flushing despite the cold.
“My what?”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. He could feel it through the bond just as clearly as she could—the possessive heat, the desperate need, the terrifying certainty that something between them had locked into place and would never come undone.
“You’re more than I expected,” he murmured, his thumb tracing her lower lip, careful of the split. “More than I was prepared for. You run toward danger. You defy me. You jump on the back of a fanatic twice your size and try to strangle him with your own chains.” A sound escaped him—not quite a laugh, not quite a growl. “You’re going to be the death of me, Elsa.”
“Or the making of you.”