The fever broke at dawn. Lyra surfaced from consciousness like a diver rising through dark water, her body aching in ways that made her aware of every muscle, joint, every place where skin met air.
The heat's desperate urgency had evaporated, leaving behind a hollow calm that felt foreign and almost frightening in its absence.
She lay in the center of the massive bed, tangled in furs and limbs and the evidence of four days of relentless claiming. The chamber smelled of them — musk, sweat, release, the copper-sweet tang of blood from mating bites that had finally stopped pulsing with heat fever and had begun to heal into permanence.
Lyra lifted her hand, heavy with exhaustion, and touched her throat.
The marks were there tender and irrevocable. Kael's bite at the junction of neck and sh
