Thoryn #2
“Thoryn—” Her voice shook slightly. “You’re shaking.”
“Pain.” Simple explanation. True. “Manageable.”
“That’s not manageable. That’s—”
“Worth it.” Interrupted her. Needed her to understand. “You. Here. Real. Worth any amount of pain. All of it. Don’t care.”
She stared at me. Something shifted in her expression. The guilt fractured. Something else showed through. Something that looked like the Maris I remembered from all those years ago. Before the empire. Before the walls.
“You’re an idiot,” she whispered.
“Loving Maris Elen made me an idiot. Still worth it.”
Her breath caught. The statement landed. Couldn’t take it back. Didn’t want to.
Then I kissed her.
Contact. My mouth on hers. Sudden. Desperate. All that absence and loss compressed into one moment. The bond exploded. Pain and pleasure and recognition all tangled together until I couldn’t separate them.
Didn’t care. This was worth it.
She kissed me back, hungry, and my hand moved to her neck, careful of pressure, just holding. Anchoring. Real. She was real and here and kissing me like she’d forgotten how to breathe and I was oxygen.
Her hands moved to my chest. Gentle. Exploring. Finding the new scars I’d earned in captivity. Tracing them. Learning them. Years of damage mapped under her fingertips.
The scales across my whole body tried to shift. Desperate biological imperative. Complete the bond. Claim the mate. Transform. Now.
They flared. For one perfect second, I felt them turn. Felt the emerald wash over gray. Felt whole. And I knew why. It wasn’t just me anymore. It was her. Her side of the bond, clean and strong, slamming into the corruption and overpowering it for that one instant.
Then the conditioning slammed down.
White-hot agony exploded through every nerve.
My entire nervous system seized. The scales locked halfway, trapped between transformation and prison gray, and the pain was worse than anything they’d done in the labs.
Worse than the suppressor collar. Worse than the sensory deprivation. Worse than the forced combat trials.
This was the experiment working exactly as designed. The bond trying to complete. My body punishing me for trying.
I pulled away. Had to. Couldn’t breathe past the pain. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t function. Fell back against the cot, gasping, vision white, tasting copper and failure.
The roar that tore out of me was involuntary. Animal. Pain given voice.
No. Not happening. Not failing this. Not again.
Forced myself still. Forced the roar to stop. Forced breathing back under control. In. Out. In. Out. Oxygen. Required for consciousness. Focus on that.
The pain didn’t recede. Just stabilized at unbearable.
Maris was still there, kneeling beside the cot, hands hovering like she wanted to touch but knew better.
“I’m okay.” Lie. Obvious lie. “Just need—” Stopped. What did I need? To not be broken? Couldn’t have that. “Minute. Need a minute.”
“Thoryn…”
“My fault. Not yours.” Important she understood that. “Tried to push through. Body disagreed. Violently. Should have…” Stopped. Should have what? Not kissed her? Unacceptable option. “Known better. Sorry.”
“Stop apologizing for being tortured.”
“Not apologizing for that. Apologizing for—” Gesture at myself. At the locked scales, the visible tremors, the complete disaster. “This. Being broken. Failing.”
“You didn’t fail.”
“Can’t even kiss you properly without my body trying to tear itself apart. That’s failure.”
I pulled her closer. Stupid. Proximity would make it worse. But I did it anyway. And she reached out. Took my hand. The one that wasn’t locked around my own ribcage trying to hold myself together.
The contact spiked the pain again. But her hand was warm and real and anchoring.
“Listen to me.” Her voice was firm. The commander voice.
The queen giving orders. “This isn’t failure.
This is you fighting through eight years of torture and still trying.
Still choosing this. Choosing me. Despite the consequences.
That’s not weakness. That’s—” She stopped.
Breath shook. “That’s the strongest thing I’ve ever seen. ”
I didn’t feel strong. Felt broken and useless and like a liability. But her hand was in mine and she hadn’t run and that mattered.
“We’ll find a way,” she said. Promise. Determination. “The Consortium broke something. We’ll figure out how to fix it. Or work around it. Or—” She tightened her grip on my hand. “Something. We’ll figure it out.”
The word hit me. We’ll. Not ‘you’ or ‘I’. We. All those years apart.
Most of them I’d spent broken and alone. She’d spent them growing powerful, but still alone.
Now we were... not alone. Still broken. Still in this mess. But not alone.
Could work around that. Could function. Could fight.
“We’ll figure it out,” I repeated. Voice raw. “Okay.”
She didn’t let go of her hand. Just sat there on the floor beside the cot, holding on while the pain slowly, incrementally, backed down from catastrophic to merely terrible.
The depot was quiet except for our breathing and the drip of condensation. Outside, the Consortium was hunting us. Inside, we were damaged and desperate and barely holding together.
But her hand was in mine. Real. Warm. Anchoring.
Good enough.