Chapter 8 #3
The awareness comes so suddenly that I stop mid-step. It isn’t a thought, exactly. More like a pull—warm, immediate, certain. A sense of direction that slots into place with a strange, effortless rightness.
Jack notices me pause.
“You all right?”
I look ahead at the bend in the corridor. “He’s here,” I say.
Jack’s brows rise. “You know that without being fully bonded, how?”
I hesitate, not even worrying about the fact that my and Varek’s relationship must be the subject of a lot of gossip. Because the real answer sounds ridiculous even inside my own head. “I just do.”
The bond hums softly, almost smug.
Well. That’s unsettling.
We round the final bend at a pace that probably qualifies as embarrassingly slow, and there he is.
Varek steps out of his quarters as if the stone itself has delivered him, broad shoulders nearly filling the corridor, silver eyes finding me immediately.
He’s already here.
Which means either Sonny runs faster than I realised or Jack and I have been walking with all the speed of an elderly couple on a scenic outing.
Honestly, both are possible.
Varek’s gaze moves over me in one swift, thorough pass, noting the pallor, the stiffness, the fact I’m upright mostly because stubbornness is doing the heavy lifting.
His expression doesn’t shift much, but the bond does.
Relief first. Then a low, steady current of possessive concern that envelops me like heat.
Jack eases his hand away from my arm, though not before making sure I’m balanced.
“Thank you,” Varek says to him.
The words are simple, but there’s real weight to them.
Jack just nods once. “He pushed too hard.”
“Obviously,” I mutter.
Neither of them dignifies that with a response.
“I have him from here,” Varek says.
Jack’s mouth twitches faintly, like he recognises a dismissal when he hears one but is willing to indulge it.
“Right,” he says. Then, to me he says, “Try not to fall over before you reach the bed.”
“No promises.”
He snorts softly and leaves us there.
And just like that, Varek steps in.
The moment he’s close enough to touch, everything in me seems to loosen in ways I don’t entirely want to analyse. I lean into him before I can stop myself, forehead brushing briefly against the solid line of his chest as I inhale.
Smoke.
Metal.
That cutting, clean edge that is just him.
Underneath all of it, something in my body settles.
I feel…. Stronger isn’t the right word. Less likely to shatter, maybe. More anchored. More here.
Varek doesn’t say anything about the way I’m using him like a support beam. He doesn’t tease. He doesn’t even pause.
One large hand comes to the small of my back, warm and steady, guiding me towards the doorway.
Inside, his quarters are dim and cool and unmistakably his. The low light from the bioluminescent veins paints shifting colour over the walls and bedding. The furs on the bed look maddeningly inviting.
The moment the door closes behind us, the outside world seems to peel away.
It’s too quiet, too intimate.
Varek turns me gently, enough that I’m facing him, and trails his fingers over the longer dreadlocks at the back of my head.
It’s such a small touch. Careful and unhurried. But it burns straight through me anyway.
“You should not have left the bed without me,” he says softly.
The words should annoy me. Maybe they do, a little.
But then his thumb brushes lightly at the edge of my hairline, and his voice drops lower. “You are precious to me.”
The sentence is so unfairly sweet that my brain more or less stalls out.
I blink at him, open my mouth, then shut it again.
How the hell am I meant to respond to that?
Varek’s gaze shifts over my face with something that looks suspiciously like amusement, as if he knows exactly what he’s just done to my ability to form thoughts.
Probably because he does.
“As fascinating as it would be to watch you attempt this conversation half-conscious,” he says, “you need sleep.”
I scowl automatically because it’s expected of me, even though the idea of sleep sounds dangerously close to heaven. “We need to talk.”
“Yes.”
“Now.”
“Later.”
I glare. He waits. Patient as stone and twice as immovable.
The bastard is absolutely right, and I hate it.
“A nap,” he says. “Then we talk.”
I hesitate anyway because some part of me still resists the idea of surrendering to care, even when I want it.
Varek reads it in my face. “I will stay.”
The words slip under my guard with insulting ease. My shoulders relax before I can stop them. “For an hour,” I say, because apparently I’m still pretending I’m negotiating from a position of strength.
His expression softens. “For an hour.”
I look at the bed, then at him. Then, because I am either brave or deeply gone in the head from pain and exhaustion, I say, “Join me.”
There’s a beat of silence. Heat creeps up my neck because now that the words are out there, they sound exactly as vulnerable as they are.
“I mean—” I clear my throat. “Hold me.”
God, I hate everything.
“I know I’m a grown-arse man,” I add, because apparently humiliation wants company. “I know I shouldn’t need—”
“Pax.”
His tone stops me.
There’s not a hint of teasing or pity or even surprise. All there is is Varek and warmth and a kind of quiet certainty that makes the air feel gentler.
“You may ask this of me whenever you wish.”
The bond goes warm and soft all at once, like something in it has been waiting for exactly those words.
I can’t think of anything useful to say to that, so I don’t try.
Varek helps me down onto the bed with absurd care, guiding my broken arm so nothing jars, then arranges the furs around me before lying beside me on top of the blankets at first, as if waiting to see whether I’ll change my mind.
I don’t.
So he shifts in behind me, one arm curved carefully around my waist, the other braced so he isn’t putting weight where I’m bruised. His body is a line of steady warmth at my back. Protective without caging. Close without taking more than I’ve asked him for.
It shouldn’t feel this safe, and yet I exhale, slow and deep, and let my eyes close.
The scent of him is everywhere. The rise and fall of his breathing a quiet rhythm behind me. One hand rests lightly over my ribs, not pressing, just there.
My body gives up almost immediately.
The last thing I’m properly aware of is Varek’s fingers moving slowly through the thinner dreadlocks at the nape of my neck—careful, like he’s learned their weight and texture already. The touch is grounding and steady. It’s devastatingly gentle in a way I’m still not used to.
Then sleep takes me, and this time, I don’t fight it.