Page 4 of Thexan

“You should not be here,” I said, my voice rough from disuse, the words slower than they should have been but controlled.

She did not retreat.

Her gaze remained on me, steady, assessing, as though she were evaluating the statement rather than reacting to it.

“With you?” she asked.

I met her eyes.

“Yes.”

The answer required no hesitation.

I expected her to move away. Any rational assessment of the situation would have led to that conclusion. Instead, she stepped closer, closing the distance I had just established as though my warning held no weight at all.

Before I could prevent it, her hand came to rest against my chest.

The contact was direct, unguarded, her palm pressing lightly against the center of my sternum.

Whatever restraint I had rebuilt gave way.

This time the change ran deeper. The tension in my body loosened despite the wound, and breath came without effort for the first time since I woke.

I drew in a breath.

It came easily.

More easily than it had since I regained awareness.

For several heartbeats, all I could comprehend was the impossible fact of her trust. She had stepped closer when every rational response should have sent her away, and something in me answered to that choice with a need that had nothing to do with injury.

Something moved through me that did not belong to pain, injury, or neural disruption.

It was need, sharpened by the knowledge that she had placed herself within reach of a male she should have feared and had done it because she chose to understand instead.

I looked from her hand on my chest to her face. What she was to me no longer felt like a conclusion I had reached; it felt like a fact my body had recognized before my mind was willing to name it.

She was not only stabilizing me.

She was becoming the point around which every other calculation altered.

That realization should have brought clarity.

Instead, it produced something dangerously close to fear.

Not for myself.

For her.

This changed everything.

And in my current state, I did not yet know whether that would ensure her survival—

Or guarantee her destruction.

Chapter Three

Brynn