Page 50 of Alpha’s Divine Claim

“Does it hurt?”

“No.”

“Is it stronger now than it was in Drakoria?”

“In Drakoria it was under my hand. Today it went through my chest.”

“Then stop bracing against it,” she says.

“Do you know what it is?”

She takes longer with that one.

“I know it isn’t anything wrong with you.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

“No.” She holds my eyes across the floor and doesn’t drop them. “Please don’t push me on this right now, Valen.”

“All right.”

That’s the second time since last night she’s asked me to wait. It’s the second time I’ve let her.

The valley goes down through its colors outside the window. Green, then gold, then the gold burning out at the edges.

She doesn’t go back to her own room. I don’t ask her why.

We go to bed when the window goes black. She takes the side against the wall. I take the side nearest the door.

She’s colder than she was last night. It comes through the blanket at me.

I put my arm over her and pull her back against me. She comes without a word and fits herself in against my chest.

There’s no plan for tomorrow anywhere in me. I don’t count the exits. I don’t run the room. There’s nothing at all in my head past the two of us right here in this bed.

Her hand comes over mine where it’s lying on her stomach. It tightens once and stays there.

There’s no last check of the window. My boots stay where they came off, nowhere my hands could find them in the dark. Nothing in me gets up to put my back against a wall.

I fall asleep before she does.

I have never done that in my life. Not in any pack, and not on any of the nights I slept outside the Ash Hollow treeline before they let me in.

Chapter 28

Valen

There’s a bird somewhere down the valley that has been at the same three notes since it was light enough to see the ceiling.

Nyxiana is still asleep against my side, one arm across my chest, hair everywhere. I’ve been awake a while and I haven’t moved, because moving would wake her. I’ve been watching the light come up the wall a shade at a time with my hands doing nothing at all.

She stirs first. I get about a breath of her softness, her face loose with it, eyes not all the way open before she starts putting herself back together into the woman who walks into a debrief. By the time she sits up it’s all back in place. We dress. The third point goes into my pack.

We find Lachlan before we go and she thanks him properly. Natalie says something to Nyxiana that makes her laugh. Neither of us says one word about the last two nights. Out in the yard she puts her hand in mine to take us home. The dark comes down over both of us all at once. No floor, no air, nothing anywhere to push against.

It holds on longer than it has any of the other times. There’s a drag in the middle of it, a stretch where we aren’t moving at all. That has never happened before on any crossing she’s made with me. Her grip closes on my hand partway through and keeps closing.

I’ve still got the print of her fingers in mine when we come out the other side. We land at the Ash Hollow treeline she goes sideways, hand hitting a trunk. She manages to stay up but it takes her a moment to get all the way.