“To protect you.”
The words hit him like a physical blow.
His eyes opened, finding hers. The feral glow hadn’t faded—he could feel it still burning through his veins, the Moon Tear energy that the ceremony had amplified beyond his control—but something in her expression made the beast go quiet.
“You were losing them.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “The court. Your people. The longer the test went unanswered, the more they doubted. I couldn’t let that happen.”
She protected me.
The realization crashed through him, shattering something fundamental in its wake. This fragile human female, collared and chained and completely at his mercy, had chosen to risk her life forhim. Not to escape. Not to prove her worth as property. But to protect the monster who kept her captive.
“Foolish.” The word came out broken. “Brave and stupid andmine.”
His muzzle found her throat—the vulnerable curve where her pulse hammered against thin skin—and he pressed close, inhaling until her scent filled every corner of his being. The Frosted Tears sweetness wrapped around him like a blanket, and for the first time since the ceremony began, he felt the madness start to ease.
Not fade. Not disappear. But quiet, like a storm retreating to the horizon.
Her. She does this. She makes the noise stop.
His tongue dragged across her throat before he could think better of it. Salt and skin and that maddening scent that drove him to the edge of sanity and then—impossibly—pulled him back. He licked again, tasting the fear and sweat and something else. Something that made his beast rumble with satisfaction.
She shivered beneath him but didn’t pull away.
“The collar.” His claws found the silver circlet, tracing its edge. “Does it hurt?”
“No.”
“Liar.” He could feel the indentations where the metal had pressed too tight during her test. The slight rawness of skin that had chafed against precious metal. “I’ll have it adjusted. Made softer.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’snot.” The snarl escaped before he could stop it. His beast was too close to the surface, too raw with need that went beyond the physical. “Nothing that hurts you isfine.”
Her hand lifted—slowly, carefully—and settled against his muzzle. The touch was featherlight, barely there, but it made him go completely still.
“Sylas.” Her voice had steadied. That impossible composure she somehow maintained even when everything should have broken her. “I’m okay. I survived. We both did.”
We both did.
Something cracked inside his chest. The careful walls he’d built around emotions he couldn’t afford to feel. The distance he’d maintained between himself and everything that might make him weak.
She’d shattered it all with a single test and two words.
We both did.
Like they were partners. Like they were in this together. Like her survival and his were somehow intertwined in ways that went beyond ownership and property and the political games that had defined his existence.
His muzzle pressed harder against her palm, and a sound escaped him—not quite a whimper, not quite a growl. Something in between that he didn’t have a name for.
“The gown.” His voice had gone thick. “It smells like them. The court. The ceremony. Xar.”
Her fingers tensed against his fur. “What?”
“I need—” He couldn’t finish. Couldn’t articulate the desperate need that drove him to tug at the gray silk, claws catching on expensive fabric with a sound that should have been alarming. “Their scent is on you. I need to—”
“Sylas.”
“Please.”