POV: Ari
It started as a whisper in the marrow.
Not pain. Not at first. Just pressure. Like the air had thickened around my soul and didn't know how to release. But then it crawled inward—heat, grief, fire—and I knew.
He had chosen to endure it.
Chosen me.
I collapsed to my knees in the middle of the glade, arms wrapped around myself as the bond split wide. Not like before, when I pressed into him with heat and want, with defiance and desire. This time, I was pulled inward. Into him. Into his silence.
And Goddess, the silence was deafening.
He hadn't screamed. Not once. Not even when I felt his skin split open from the lash of Therrin's past. Not when the brand carved itself into him like a mockery of hers. Not when my own face—my own soul—appeared before him like a test of mercy.
He didn't flinch.
He didn't turn away.
He bore it.
For me.
Tears streamed hot down my face, unexpected. I didn't cry. I didn't. That was Therrin's thing—the softness, the breaking. But this wasn't her grief. This was mine. And it was loud.
Because I had never been chosen like that before.
I had been feared. Contained. Hated. Worshipped, maybe, for my fire. Desired, yes—for my edge. But never… carried.
Never endured.
Not the way he had just done for me. For us.
A tremor rolled through my chest, and I curled tighter against the earth. I couldn't feel his voice—couldn't hear it, couldn't reach out—but I felt the wound he bore now, not on his skin but in the place where our souls brushed like ghosted fingertips.
The shard had taken root in him.
Opposite Therrin's Thornbrand.
As if the gods themselves had decided to balance us on his chest.
Why? Why would he do that?
I wasn't soft. I wasn't good. I was born a weapon, forged in spite, honed on betrayal. Even Therrin had feared me once, locked me away behind her ribs like a curse she couldn't name. And maybe I was. Maybe I still am.
And yet…
He saw me.
He let me step into him, during that trial. I'd felt it. The way he let me in. Not fought, not denied. No shame. No revulsion. Just that quiet, aching thing that lives in the eyes of someone who finally understands.
And I hadn't deserved it.
I pressed my hands into the grass, nails biting the dirt as if pain might make sense of this. It didn't. It never did.
Therrin stirred inside, a ripple across still water. She didn't speak. She didn't have to. I could feel her just… being with me. Not blocking me. Not taking over.
For the first time, she wasn't afraid of what I might do with this kind of grief.
We shared it.
She saw what he'd done too.
And for once, we both broke in the same place.
"You saw me," I whispered, to no one. To him. To the bond. To the bruised space between all three of us. "You didn't run."
The wind answered. No words. Just the feel of his silence—still clinging to the thread that bound us.
It was the silence of someone who had listened. Not to fix. Not to save. Just to hold.
I couldn't remember the last time anyone had done that for me. Maybe never.
I'd spent years clawing for space inside Therrin, forcing her to feel things she wasn't ready to feel. I'd screamed and seduced and burned my way into being real. Because I was always afraid that if I didn't fight for attention, I'd disappear.
But he'd seen me.
He hadn't even asked me to speak.
He just let me exist.
A sob cracked my chest open, and I let it. My breath came in shudders. My arms trembled, fists pressed to the dirt. My body ached as if I'd gone through the trial myself. Maybe I had. Maybe this was what it meant to be bonded.
Not just in passion, but in pain.
Not just in fire, but in endurance.
The sun dipped low, bleeding across the sky in streaks of dying gold. I stayed at the edge of the glade long after the pain receded, long after the pressure in my chest stopped feeling like a knife and started feeling like a scar.
He was still alive.
I could feel him—dimly, like heat behind a wall. Quiet. Breathing. Somewhere deep inside the sanctuary of the trials, between what was and what still waited. He hadn't broken. Not yet.
But the bond pulsed strangely now, like something had shifted. Hardened. Not closed off—but heavier. It felt like he was sleeping inside stone.
I wasn't sure if it was for healing… or protection.
He was too far for me to reach. And even if I could, I knew better than to try. These trials weren't meant to be shared. Not like that. This pain had to be his. Alone. Just like mine had been.
So I stayed.
Not to wait for him.
But to witness.
I sat in the dirt as twilight slipped its fingers around the trees. No one came looking for me. Not Therrin. Not Grimm. Not the spirits that whispered through the leaves at night. Maybe they knew I needed this silence. Maybe they were afraid of what I might say if they broke it.
I didn't speak.
Not even to myself.
Because words felt small right now.
This wasn't grief.
It wasn't longing, either.
It was something harder to name—a thread of something real, pulling taut in the center of my chest. A new kind of ache. The kind that grows when someone does something you can never repay.
He had taken my pain into himself.
Not out of pity. Not to be worshiped. Not for power.
He just… chose to carry it.
Without question.
Without flinching.
Without asking me to be easier, softer, less.
And now he was somewhere I couldn't follow, bleeding through a silence that had reshaped the way I saw him.
He wasn't just my mate anymore.
He was something more dangerous.
He was safe.
And I didn't know how to hold that.
My fingers dug into the earth as if the soil might anchor me. Somewhere inside, Therrin stirred, watching silently. I could feel her thoughts folding around mine, not invasive this time—just close. For once, she didn't try to protect me from it. From him. From what this might mean.
Maybe she was beginning to understand, too.
I tilted my head back and stared at the stars slowly unraveling overhead.
Four trials left.
Four more nights without him.
Four more chances to change everything we thought we knew about each other.
I wasn't afraid of what the trials might do to Dion.
I was afraid of what he'd come back wanting.
Because for the first time in my long, fractured existence, I didn't want to be touched like fire.
I wanted to be held.
And he was the only one who knew how to do that without burning.