Page 57 of Thexan

I removed the final layer and assessed the wound.

It had reopened.

Not catastrophically, not enough to undo the structural repair the bond had stabilized, but enough that fresh blood had worked its way through the reinforcement.

“You pushed too hard,” I said.

“The engagement required—”

“I know what it required,” I cut in. “That doesn’t mean you get to ignore the damage afterward.”

He didn’t respond to that.

I cleaned the wound in silence for a few seconds, focusing on what I could measure, what I could fix, what I understood. It was easier than thinking about everything else layered on top of it.

“Hold still,” I said, applying pressure as I worked.

“I am.”

I secured a new dressing, reinforcing it more carefully this time, adjusting for movement I knew he would not avoid the next time he had to fight.

“You’re going to keep this supported,” I said. “No sudden torque, no overextension, and if you feel instability—”

“I will inform you.”

“You’d better.”

I finished securing the bandage and sat back slightly, checking my work out of habit more than necessity. Everything held the way it should have, the reinforcement steady, the damage contained, and for a moment I expected that to be enough—to move on to the next thing the way I always did once a crisis was under control.

But I didn’t move.

Somewhere between tightening that last wrap and letting my hands fall away, my focus had shifted without me noticing, and when I became aware of it, I realized I was no longer looking at the wound at all.

I was looking at him.

The difference settled in slowly, not as a sharp realization but as something that had already taken hold before I named it. Up until now, every thought I’d had about him had been tied to survival—measuring damage, anticipating failure, staying ahead of whatever might break next. That urgency had kept everything else at a distance, had given me something solid to focus on so I didn’t have to question what any of it meant.

Now there was nothing breaking.

Nothing immediate to fix.

And without that urgency, there was nothing left to stand between me and the reality of what I was looking at.

Not the injured stranger who had collapsed at my door. Not the problem I had to solve.

My mate.

The word didn’t come from him. He hadn’t said it, hadn’t needed to. It settled into place on its own, quiet but absolute, carrying a weight I wasn’t prepared to deal with all at once.

I had known him for hours. That was the part my mind kept circling back to, as if repeating it might make everything else feel less solid, less final. Hours should not be enough time to alter the course of a life. It should not be enough time to anchor something this permanent.

And yet the awareness sitting under my skin didn’t feel temporary. It didn’t feel like something that would fade when the immediate danger passed or when the next crisis demanded my attention.

It felt fixed.

As though something in me had already made the adjustment before I had consciously agreed to it, and I was only now catching up to a decision my body had accepted the moment I touched him.

My gaze moved over him again, slower this time, not searching for signs of injury or strain but taking in details I hadn’t allowed myself to notice before. The structure of him, the controlled stillness, the way he held himself even now, even seated, as though the world required nothing less than his full attention at all times.