19. Naeris #2
But the question lodged in my chest refused to go away. Finally, I wrapped both hands around my mug and stared into the dark liquid. I pulled my nerves together, feeling foolish. I had led attacks on Sythari ships with less fear than a simple question should be able to hold. “How do you know?”
Ella tilted her head. “Know what?”
I swallowed. The words were harder to say than I expected. “How do you know if what you feel is real?” My voice dropped. “Or if the bond is simply forcing you to want them.”
Silence settled over the table.
Not uncomfortable.
Thoughtful.
Ella exchanged a glance with Nadine.
Nadine was the first to speak. “I asked myself the same question. Repeatedly.”
That surprised me. Dravok and her seemed to be, well, fused together. “You did?”
She nodded. “Dravok and I were subjected to an intense biological urge almost immediately. Elevated dopamine, oxytocin, heart rate variability, altered sleep patterns, increased sensory awareness.” Her mouth curved slightly.
“From a purely biochemical standpoint, the bond is extraordinarily persuasive.”
I stared at her. She was putting my fear into the perfect words. “Exactly.”
Nadine folded her hands on the table. “So I treated it like a hypothesis. If the bond were solely coercive, my emotional responses would be limited to instinctive attraction and dependency.”
Ella smiled into her tea. “That sounds very Nadine.”
Nadine ignored her. “But then I discovered my feelings deepened when Dravok was absent. I missed his specific humor. His intellect. The way he listens before speaking. The way he notices details others overlook. Those are not generalized bond responses. Those are individual attachments.”
The tension in my chest loosened slightly. “So you fell in love with him.”
A faint blush rose on Nadine’s cheeks. “Yes,” she admitted quietly. “In addition to the bond.”
Ella reached over and squeezed my hand. “I fought it too.”
I turned to her. Her expression softened, blue eyes luminous with understanding.
“When I first met Zapharos, I thought the bond was some cosmic trick. I was angry. Terrified. And if I’m honest, I didn’t appreciate having a seven-foot golden warrior suddenly deciding I belonged to him.”
I laughed again. “That sounds familiar.”
Her smile widened. “The bond made me notice him. It opened a door. But it didn’t create what came after.”
“What came after?” I asked.
Ella’s gaze grew distant and tender. “The way he carries the weight of everyone around him and still makes room for me. The way he touches me like I’m precious.
The way he tries so hard to understand my world.
” Her voice thickened. “The bond may have introduced us, but I fell in love with Zapharos.”
She squeezed my fingers again. “If the bond vanished tomorrow, I would still choose him.”
Emotion rose unexpectedly in my throat.
Nadine nodded. “Same.”
The certainty in their voices hit me harder than I expected. For days, I had been clinging to the idea that my feelings for Thyros were artificial. Manufactured. Convenient. A cosmic compulsion.
But when I thought of him, what overwhelmed me was not simply desire. It was the memory of his fierce vulnerability. The way his hands trembled when he showed me the mark on his back. The way he had admitted, with heartbreaking honesty, that he believed himself unworthy of love.
The way he looked at me as if I were the answer to a question he had carried for millions of years.
The bond hadn’t made me care that he felt broken.
It hadn’t made my chest ache when he doubted his own worth.
It hadn’t made me want to kiss every scar, every fear, every shadow he tried so hard to hide.
That was me.
Oh.
I lowered my gaze, blinking rapidly.
Ella’s voice was gentle. “You love him, don’t you?”
The truth rose so swiftly, there was no point denying it. But panic rose just as fast. A breathless laugh escaped me, half incredulous, half horrified.
“Love?” I repeated, shaking my head. “I’ve known him for less than a week.”
The words sounded absurd even to my own ears. Less than a week. A handful of days. A few arguments. A rescue. Three devastating kisses. How could that possibly be enough to change the course of a life?
Nadine snorted softly.
“I had a similar objection,” she said. “It lasted approximately forty-eight hours.”
I looked up. Her expression was calm but unmistakably fond.
“By the third day, I was running comparative analyses to determine whether my attachment to Dravok was a neurochemical artifact or a legitimate emotional bond.”
“And?” I asked.
Nadine’s mouth curved in a rare, genuine smile. “And I was in love with him.”
Ella laughed.
“Honestly, I think it took me about as long.”
I stared at them both. “You’re serious.”
“Completely,” Ella said.
She leaned closer, her eyes warm with understanding. “I know it sounds impossible. I kept telling myself there was no way I could fall in love that quickly. On Earth, we’re taught that love is supposed to take time. That it has to build slowly and follow a certain order.”
“Forget what you learned about values,” Nadine cut in dryly.
Ella blinked.
“Oh. Right.” She gave me an apologetic, wry grin. “You’re not from Earth.”
A reluctant smile tugged at my mouth. Ella squeezed my hand.
“So forget whatever your people taught you. Forget whatever rules you think love is supposed to follow.” Her expression softened. “It doesn’t matter.”
She glanced at Nadine, then back at me. “When you know, you just know.”
The simple certainty in her voice unraveled the last of my resistance.
Growing up in the Temple, love had never been a real consideration.
It was a word whispered between girls after lights-out, passed from one hopeful dreamer to another like contraband.
Something soft and foolish and utterly irrelevant to the lives the Sythari had planned for us.
What did we know about love?
Nothing.
We were not raised to choose our mates. We were not even raised to believe we deserved affection. By the stars, we had never even known the love of a parent. No mother had tucked us into bed. No father had told us we were precious simply because we existed.
The only love we possessed was the fragile loyalty we offered one another, and even that was constantly undermined. The priests cultivated competition with ruthless precision. Bloodlines determined status. Status determined value. And value determined how useful we were.
Not to ourselves. To the Sythari. To them, we were assets to be traded, polished, and sacrificed.
And with the rebels...
I wasn’t even certain how to define what I felt for Kael’Varyn. When his distress call had come through, a sharp pain had ripped through me so fiercely I could barely breathe. Terror. Grief. The desperate certainty that I could not lose him. I had run toward danger without hesitation.
Was that love?
Perhaps.
Or perhaps it was the fierce attachment of an abandoned child to the first person who had ever made her feel safe.
Kael’Varyn had given me freedom. He had believed in me when I barely believed in myself.
He had become the closest thing I had ever known to family, though I had never been emotionally literate enough to understand that.
I had known him for five years.
Five years of trust, loyalty, and hard-won affection.
But what I felt for Thyros was different on so many levels, it was not even in the same galaxy.
Because I did know. I knew in the way my pulse steadied when Thyros walked into a room.
In the way the jagged pieces inside me quieted when he looked at me as though I were something precious rather than broken.
In the way his pain felt like my own.
In the way my heart clenched every time he spoke of himself with shame.
In the way one kiss had stripped me more bare than all the lovers I had taken in the years after my escape.
With Kael’Varyn, I had found safety.
With Thyros, I had found home.
I knew in the fierce certainty that if he reached for me, I would go to him. Not because the bond demanded it. Because I wanted to. So there was only one answer left to give, surprising myself more than them.
“Yes,” I whispered.
The word settled over me with startling clarity. Not fear. Not obligation. Not surrender. Love.
Nadine passed me a napkin with efficient precision. I hadn’t realized tears were slipping down my cheeks.
“There is also a statistical likelihood,” she said matter-of-factly, “that resisting a mutually beneficial soul bond with a male who is deeply devoted to you is a poor long-term strategy.”
I let out a watery laugh. Ella wrapped her arms around me before I could stop her. For one stiff moment, instinct urged me to pull away. Then I melted into the embrace. Nadine joined us a second later, a little awkwardly but with unmistakable sincerity.
Surrounded by these extraordinary women—each of us ripped from our lives and thrust into a destiny none of us had asked for—I felt something shift. Not just acceptance. Belonging.
We were not here by accident.
We were not victims of some cosmic manipulation.
We were part of something ancient and profound.
And for the first time, that truth no longer felt like a threat. It felt like home. When we finally pulled apart, Ella brushed my hair back from my face. “Go talk to him.”
I laughed shakily. “He’s going to be insufferably smug.”
Nadine adjusted her blouse. “Based on my observations, he has been miserable for seventy-two hours.”
That image sent a warm rush through my chest.
“Also,” Nadine added, “his productivity has decreased by approximately thirty-eight percent.”
I burst out laughing.
Ella grinned. “See? He needs you.”
I wiped my cheeks and stood. For the first time in days, the golden thread no longer felt like a chain. It felt like a path. A path I was finally ready to follow.