Thoryn
Iwoke to the sound of dripping water and the realization that I’d actually slept.
Impressive. My body had apparently decided that blood loss and infection warranted unconsciousness, bond pain or not. The scientists would be disappointed. They’d spent years trying to condition that response out of me.
Turns out spite only works when you’re awake.
The safe house looked exactly the same. Raw rock walls. Flickering emergency light. Two metal cots. Maris on one, me on the other.
The wounds throbbed. My shoulder burned. My side felt like someone had filed the edges of the vibro-blade cut with sandpaper and poured acid in for good measure.
But the bond pain was manageable. Ten was manageable. I’d lived at ten for months at a time.
I could handle ten.
Maris sat up. She’d been awake. Watching me.
“How long?” I asked.
“Two hours.”
So I’d slept through half our safe window. Great. My body’s timing was impeccable.
She stood. Crossed to my cot.
The pain climbed to eleven.
“You need to eat,” she said.
She held out another ration bar. The last one from her pack.
I took it. Our fingers brushed. The scales on my hand flashed emerald for a fraction of a second before the gray slammed back.
Twelve.
I ate the ration bar. It tasted like compressed cardboard and chemicals. I’d had worse. Much worse. The Consortium’s idea of adequate nutrition had been “whatever keeps the subject functional enough to continue experiments.”
This was practically gourmet.
Maris returned to her cot. The pain dropped back to eleven. Then ten.
She stared at the chip in her hand. “How do you do this?”
“Do what?”
“Accept it. What they did to you. What they made you.”
I considered the question. It was a good question. The kind of question I’d asked myself roughly three thousand times during captivity.
“I don’t accept it,” I said. “I just don’t let it be the only thing I am.”
She looked at me. Gray eyes sharp and searching.
“They spent eight years trying to break me,” I said. “They twisted my biology. Conditioned my responses. Turned proximity to my mate into torture. They did everything they could to make me a weapon without weakness.”
“And?”
“They failed. My weakness is still you.”
The words came out simple. True. She was my weakness. She’d always been my weakness. The Consortium had just made it hurt.
Didn’t make it less true.
She stood, but this time she hesitated. She stayed by her own cot, five feet of cold air between us. She remembered what happened in the last safe house. She’d seen my scales flash emerald under her touch, just before the pain nearly tore me apart. She knew proximity was poison.
But I knew something else.
Underneath the ten, underneath the fire and the knives, I felt it.
A thrum.
Faint. Clean. A signal cutting through the interference.
Her bond. The healthy half. Reaching for me, even from across the room.
My conditioning screamed at me to stay away. To protect myself.
The thrum had a different message.
Home.
“Come here,” I said.
Her head snapped up, her eyes wide. “What?”
“Come here, Maris.”
“Thoryn, no. It hurts you. I’m... I make it worse.”
“I know.” I held out my left hand. My good hand. “I don’t care.”
She crossed the space. Sat on the very edge of my cot, as far from me as possible, her entire body tense, ready to flee.
The proximity made my scales ripple. The pain jumped to twelve.
She flinched, seeing the reaction. “See? This is a bad idea.”
“It’s the only idea.” I didn’t move my hand. Waited.
She shifted closer. Her hip pressed against my leg.
The bond pain spiked to thirteen. I hissed, a sharp intake of breath, but didn’t pull away.
“Thoryn—” she started, ready to move back.
“It’s not just pain,” I ground out, forcing the words. “I can feel you. Your half. The thrum. It’s stronger.”
This was the part the scientists had missed. They’d never studied a healthy bond, only my broken one. They hadn’t anticipated her half of the equation.
“The emerald?” she asked, her voice quiet, remembering what she’d seen.
“More than that.” I looked at her. “It’s... a signal. Underneath their noise. It’s fighting for me.” I kept my hand outstretched between us. “I need you to fight with me. I can’t... I can’t do it alone.”
This was the choice. Pain or home. Prison or her.
I’d already made it. I’d made it every day in that cell.
She pulled her legs up onto the cot. Settled in beside me. Not touching, but the heat from her body radiated across the small gap.
The pain climbed to fourteen. This was a terrible, monumentally stupid idea.
And it was the only thing that made sense.
My conditioning screamed. The thrum grew louder. Two signals fighting for dominance.
“Thoryn.” Her voice was quiet. Determined. “I won’t let them win. I won’t let them keep us apart.”
The thrum pulsed. Strong. Her bond calling to mine.
I chose her. I always chose her.
I reached across the last few inches and grabbed her hand, lacing my fingers with hers. Ignored the pain screaming at fifteen. Focused on the thrum, on the clean signal cutting through the noise.
She turned. Her other hand found my face. Her palm pressed against my jaw.
The scales under her touch flashed brilliant emerald. The thrum became a roar.
The pain hit sixteen. Numbers I’d never reached. Numbers that didn’t exist on any scale.
I kissed her anyway.
Her mouth was warm. Soft. Real. The bond exploded between us, the thrum flooding through every nerve, drowning out the conditioning’s screams.
The emerald spread. I could feel it racing across my scales. My real color. My bonded color. The color they’d burned away trying to break me.
The pain was at seventeen. Eighteen. Climbing past any reference point.
But the thrum was louder.
Her hands tangled in the scales at the back of my neck. Her body pressed against mine. The bond sang.
And underneath the agony, underneath the war, underneath eight years of conditioning and torture, I felt whole.
The Consortium had tried to break this. They’d failed.
We were still here. Still connected. Still choosing each other despite the cost.
She pulled back slightly. Her eyes searched mine.
“Don’t stop,” I said.
“You’re in pain.”
“I’m always in pain.” I kissed her again. “This is worth it.”
Because it was. She was worth every second of agony. Worth eight years of torture. Worth eighteen on an impossible pain scale.
Worth everything.
The thrum pulsed. The emerald held. The bond fought.
And somewhere in the back of my broken, conditioned biology, something shifted.
The war wasn’t over. But the signal was winning.