Page 35 of Bonded By Stone & Blood

"You would have driven each other completely mad," I say. "And been inseparable within a week."

"When the cavern sealed—” I stop, breath through the suffocating memories and continue. “When the sulfur came through she kept herself awake as long as she could. Talking. Loud, useless talking she always does when she is frightened, filling the air so there was no room left for fear."

My voice drops to a whisper. "She was the last sound I heard before the Stone Sleep took me."

I don’t tell her the rest. That I woke alone into silence. That the first thing I understood, before I understood anything else, was that the particular weight that had lived in my chest for centuries was not grief anymore—it had become architecture. Structural. Load-bearing. The thing I had built everything else on top of.

"I'm sorry," Sabine says.

"Don't." The word comes out hard. "I don't want pity. I have carried that particular stone long enough that it no longer feels heavy."

She is quiet. Then, without a word, she turns and steps directly into my side. Not reaching for my hand. Not turning her face up at me with softened eyes. She simply presses her weight against my ribs and stays there, her warmth bleeding through the cold of my skin like a single lit coal placed against granite.

She is so small. I forget that sometimes, during arguments and strategy meetings where she behaves twice her size. Standing against me now, I am acutely aware of how entirely I could wrap around her. How entirely I already want to.

The wind comes down off the summit and presses her closer.

I tilt my head down at her face. Her eyes are on the valley. Calm. Present. Not offering me anything except exactly what she is—here, warm, unbothered by the dark I just handed her.

I love her.

Not the bond. Not the blood. Not the instinct that fused her to me when she smeared her palm across my face in the rubble.The bond is noise. This is what lives underneath the noise — older and quieter and entirely without precedent. It does not feel like territory or possession. It feels like recognition.

The words form in my chest and climb toward my throat, stuck there, ready, and I don’t say them.

Because if I say them, she becomes the point everything targets. Every rival Alpha who wants me destabilized. Every clan that already whispers about my emotional vulnerabilities. Every blade and claw and calculated trap Tharros has laid across this mountain. The moment I give her that word, it becomes a weapon in every enemy hand within a hundred miles.

Instead, I wrap my arms around her, hold her close. I press my lips into her thick mane of brown hair, and say, "In case you were still wondering. I never had a mate."

She pulls back just far enough to drive her elbow hard into my ribs. I barely feel it.

"That’s not funny," she whispers.

"I'm not laughing."

Her expression moves through grief and relief, then she turns back toward the valley and settles her weight against me again, harder than before, as if she is punishing me for saying it by refusing to let go.

A smile rests on my lips, and I hold her closer.

Dawn comes gray and punishing.

I leave before she wakes, taking to the sky as the first pale light bleeds across the cloud layer. The cold snaps at my wings on the upstroke. I rise through the overcast, clearing it in three powerful beats, and bank north to run the standard patrol loop.

I see them before my eyes fully adjust.

The mountain passes are full.

Not scouts. Not probing skirmishes. The full collected mass of Tharros and Flora's combined forces stretches across every accessible approach to the valley—wings like a second storm front blotting the eastern ridgeline, ground forces moving through the passes below like a dark tide finding every crack in the stone. They have closed the circle overnight. Perfectly. Completely. Every route in and every route out.

The valley is not surrounded, it is swallowed.

Then, from somewhere below in the mountain camp, the war horn detonates across the silence—a sound like iron splitting, long and metallic and absolute—and every bird within a half-mile breaks from the trees at once.

The siege is over.

The war has arrived.

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