I knelt beside her in that dark internal landscape and did not touch her at first.
I let myself feel her exhaustion, the heaviness of it, the way her breathing felt like dragging weight uphill.
‘I know,’ I whispered, not aloud but through that thin electric thread that has always connected us. ‘I know you’re tired.’
She did not move.
‘I know it hurt.’
Her ear flicked once, barely.
‘But you need to wake up. Alaric has been poisoned’
The shift was instant.
It was not gentle.
Her dark body uncoiled in a single violent motion, claws striking the ground of my consciousness with a crack that reverberated through me physically.
Her pink eyes opened and they were not soft or groggy or confused.
They were glowing with murderous fury.
‘Mate,’ she snarled, and the word tore through me lik
