Chapter 7
CHAPTER
SEVEN
Pain has layers. That’s the first thing I figure out after two days stuck in this godforsaken bed.
There’s the obvious stuff—broken arm, ribs that feel like they’ve been rearranged by a sadist, bruises blooming across my torso like some kind of abstract art piece.
Then there’s the deeper shit. The ache that sits under everything, dull and constant, like my body’s trying to remember what it felt like before it got dragged through hell and back.
And then there’s something new.
Something… wrong.
Or right.
I shift carefully, testing it again. The familiar protest is there—burning, immediate—but it fades faster than it should. Too fast.
My body is healing. Not just healing—accelerating.
I stare at my wrapped and braced arm. Two days ago, Iris had said broken. Now? Still fucked, but… less so.
“Yeah,” I mutter to myself, flexing my fingers slightly. “That’s not normal.”
No shit.
I lie back, staring up—not at the cracked ceiling of the bowling alley—but at stone.
Real stone.
Dark, uneven, veined faintly with a soft bioluminescent glow that pulses through the rock like something alive. The light isn’t harsh. It breathes. Slow. Steady. Blue-green veins are threaded through the ceiling above me, casting the whole room in a dim, shifting haze.
Dathanor.
Varek’s quarters.
His space.
Nine years is a long time to stay away from somewhere that gets under your skin. Long enough that memory smooths out the edges. Long enough that you forget just how strange it feels until you’re back in it.
Dathanor isn’t underground the way people expect.
It should be.
Everything about it feels like it belongs buried—carved from stone, shaped by something old and deliberate, all winding passages and cavernous rooms—but it sits above ground, plonked unceremoniously on the planet’s surface next to the side of a rise like the world tried to swallow it and failed.
From the outside, it looks like nothing. Just rock. Just cliff.
Inside?
It’s a maze.
Tunnels curve instead of running straight, like they were grown rather than carved. Some walls are smooth, worn down by years—centuries—of movement. Other edges are jagged, raw—like whoever made them didn’t care about comfort, only function.
The air is cooler here. Cleaner. Carries that faint mineral tang I remember too well.
And that glow.
Always that glow.
It runs through everything. In the ceilings, the walls, sometimes even the floors—bioluminescent veins that hum with quiet energy. Not bright enough to blind. Just enough to see. Enough to feel watched if you’re the kind of person who lets your brain wander in that direction.
I don’t. Mostly.
I shift again, more carefully this time, adjusting against the bedding.
It’s better than anything I’ve slept on in years—thick, layered furs and woven fabric instead of the usual scratchy crap I make do with.
It traps heat, softens the stone beneath, makes it far too easy to stay exactly where I am.
It smells like him.
Smoke. Metal. That clean, sharp edge that clings to him no matter where he is. It’s stronger here, soaked into everything—into the fabric, the furs, the air itself. This is his space. Not borrowed. Not temporary.
His.
And fuck me… I don’t hate that. The realisation forms quieter than I expect. There’s no spike of panic, no immediate instinct to shove it away and pretend it doesn’t matter. Just a slow, uncomfortable awareness settling into place.
I scrub a hand over my face. “Right.”
I think about the sweet kiss he gave me a few hours ago when he left me.
The bond hums under my skin. It’s steady and present.
It doesn’t feel like a hook anymore. Not exactly. More like… a thread. Something constant, woven through me whether I like it or not. I still don’t trust it. Don’t trust what it means, what it could become if I stop fighting it entirely.
But I’m not fighting it the same way anymore either.
That’s the problem.
I exhale slowly, staring at the ceiling as the glow pulses faintly above me.
Aelith and his golden retriever human, who I have vague memories of, flash through my mind anyway. Them and that bloody trade.
The prince of this entire bloody world walked back into that palace—back to his mother, back into the lion’s den—with his human mate at his side… so I could walk out.
I harden my jaw. “Yeah,” I mutter. “Not touching that one either.”
Because what the hell do you even do with that?
Gratitude sits wrong. Guilt sits worse.
I don’t know Aelith. Not really. I’ve seen him, heard stories, felt the weight of what he is in the way people talk about him—but that’s not the same as knowing someone. It doesn’t change the fact that he made that call. Nor does it change the fact that Varek let him.
For me.
I grip the fur beside me.
The bond pulses again, softer this time, and I let it. Just for a second. Then I huff out a breath and drag my focus somewhere safer. Because if I start pulling at that thread too hard, I’ve got a feeling everything’s going to come apart in my hands.
And I’ve only just stopped pretending I don’t want to hold onto it.
Instead, I focus on the more immediate problem.
I’m bored out of my fucking mind.
Two days. Two days of lying here, being poked, prodded, told to “rest,” like I’m not already crawling out of my own skin. Food gets delivered, and I’m led to and from amenities to piss and shit by Ludgen—a large Glowranth who has a Dreting mate—when I need to relieve myself.
Two days of seeing Varek exactly once per day.
Evenings.
Like clockwork.
He shows up, checks on me, stands there being large and silent and there, and then sleeps on the damn stone floor before kissing me sweetly and disappearing again.
Back into his command post and the rebellion that won’t lead itself.
He has people to command, a world to not let burn down. And maybe even dozens of other worlds to find a way back to.
I get it—him not being here. It doesn’t mean I like it.
I push myself upright with a hiss as my ribs protest. The furs shift under me, dragging slightly against my skin as the room tilts for half a second.
I wait it out, breathing slowly, steadying my breaths.
The glow in the walls pulses, indifferent. Then I swing my legs over the side of the bed.
Cold stone meets my feet, grounding—solid, real. “Look at that,” I mutter. “Up and mobile. Someone alert the authorities.”
I wince and pause, hoping like hell someone isn’t lurking outside of the quarters. I don’t think anyone is stationed in the corridor, but you never know.
When no one answers, I breathe a small sigh of relief before slowly standing. My body’s never been carved or hard-edged, but it’s mine. It’s gotten me this far.
Pain spikes—bright and sudden—but it recedes quicker than it should. Again.
Yeah. Definitely the bonds.
Lucky me.
I brace a hand against the stone wall beside the bed. It’s cool under my palm, faintly humming with that same low, living energy as the rest of the place.
“All right,” I say under my breath.
The stone doesn’t answer back. It never does. No mirrors here, no polished surfaces to check how wrecked I look—just uneven rock, that low, steady glow, and the quiet weight of a place that was never meant for comfort.
“We’re doing this.”
I push away from the wall and take a careful step towards the doorway.
The corridor beyond curves gently to the left, the same as I remember—nothing in Dathanor runs straight unless it absolutely has to.
The walls narrow and widen without warning, like the whole place breathes around you, shifting just enough to keep you aware you’re inside something old and not entirely predictable.
I move slowly at first. Partly because I have to, and partly because I’m taking it in.
Nine years is long enough to forget details, but not the feeling.
That comes back quick. The quiet hum of the bioluminescence threading through the stone.
The way sound carries strangely—too far in some places, swallowed entirely in others.
The constant sense that everything here is deliberate, even when it looks rough or unfinished.
People move through the tunnels around me.
Riftborn. Different species, different shapes, all carrying that same underlying tension I remember. Purpose. Readiness. No one here is idle unless they’ve earned the right to be.
A few glance at me as I pass—some with curiosity, some with recognition, a few lingering just long enough to make it clear I’m not exactly hard on the eyes, even half broken. No one stops me, which is good. I don’t have the patience for conversation right now. I have questions.
And exactly one person I want answers from.
Varek.
My molars press together as I make my way deeper into the settlement.
He’s been avoiding me.
Not deliberately. Not in a way anyone else would notice. He’s been with me every night, like he always does, checking on me, making sure I’m breathing, not actively dying, not about to do something stupid like rip out my own stitches.
But during the day?
Gone.
Command meetings. Patrols. Planning sessions. Whatever it is he’s doing to keep this entire operation from collapsing in on itself.
I get it, which still pisses me off. Because there’s one thing he hasn’t done: explain.
I turn down another corridor, moving carefully as the ground slopes slightly underfoot.
Aelith. The image hits again, clearer now. The prince standing in that courtyard. Bound, but not broken. Choosing—choosing—to walk back into the palace with his human mate at his side.
For me.
For the exchange.
For whatever plan Varek apparently has running through that head of his.
I exhale through my nose. “Yeah,” I mutter. “That’s a conversation we’re having.” Because I’m not stupid. That wasn’t just a trade—not really.
Aelith going back to the palace? That’s not a loss. Not for someone like him. Not for someone raised inside that system, who knows every corridor, every weakness, every person worth watching.
That’s infiltration. It has to be.