SIGNALS
ELENA – RYTHAR’S QUARTERS
I wait in our quarters for hours, sitting on a soft couch that Rythar had brought in for me.
Rythar enters the room silently. He sits beside me, close enough that our thighs touch. He brushes a strand of hair from my face. “Are you frightened?”
I lean against him, breathing his reassuring scent. “Yes,” I admit.
He rests his hand on my knee. For a long moment, he just breathes.
“I was harsh with you,” he says quietly. "You did what your instincts demanded. I cannot fault you for being what you are.”
“You’re still locking me in,” I say.
“Yes.” His thumb moves across my knee, one slow pass. “And I have thought of nothing else since.”
There’s no trace of anger in his face. Just the look of a man holding too many things in place at once.
"You scared me," I tell him. "Not because I thought you'd hurt me. Because for a second, you sounded like you wanted to."
His fingers tighten on my leg. "I would sooner cut off my own hand."
"I know." And I do. That's what makes this so complicated.
He turns my face toward him, his fingers warm against my cheek. "You are brave, Elena. Foolishly brave. It will make me old before my time." The corner of his mouth lifts. "But I would not have you any other way."
I turn and straddle his lap, pressing my lips against his firmly.
His hands go to my hips before sliding down to cup me, pulling me closer to him.
He stands up and holds me with one arm, kissing me, while he frees his rigid length with his other hand.
I feel his cock press under me as I wrap my legs tighter around him.
The mate bond feels like an electric current under my skin as he slowly undoes the tie of my robe and it falls off my shoulders.
He sits again, keeping me straddling him. His fingers trace patterns along the curve of my breast before teasing a hardened nipple with gentle pinches and twists. He reaches behind him, over his head, and takes a small knife from the wall.
“Hold still,” he whispers. He deftly cuts off the underclothing I wear under my robe.
“Was that necessary?” I nuzzle his neck.
“No. I enjoyed it.” He sets the knife back in its place and lifts me slightly. I lower myself onto his hard cock, breathing deep as he fills me completely.
His rhythm is hard and relentless, each thrust met by an answering rock of my hips.
I squeeze his shoulders as he finds that spot inside me that makes my voice break. Every sound I make seems to drive him closer to his own release.
Our eyes lock as everything in my center pulls tight. He groans and thrusts harder, pushing me over the edge into a shuddering orgasm. His hips jerk against mine as he follows me, releasing himself inside me with a groan.
He rises with me still straddling him and walks to the bed. We collapse together, breathing heavily. His arms stay wrapped around me, his face stays buried in my neck and hair.
I close my eyes, wishing this could last forever.
But knowing now that it won’t.
I jerk awake, body rigid, lungs locked. For a second there is nothing but dark and the taste of copper in my mouth.
Then Rythar's scent finds me, cinnamon and skin, and the weight of his hand on my thigh tells me where I am before my eyes adjust. My skin is slick.
His hand is dry and hot and already pressing harder, the way it does when he senses something wrong before I've said a word.
The mate bond is humming like a wire in my hand, but there’s also a pulling sensation.
It’s the Concord Stone’s gift. The psychic channel.
The one that links me to the other brides.
It's not the full assault from last time.
It's directional. A thread pulled taut between my chest and somewhere I can't see.
Sophia. Her name arrives before the rest of her does.
Her mind hits mine like a fist wrapped in ice.
Panic, but colder than last time, compressed, the way you compress a wound when there's no one coming to help.
She's holding herself together with her teeth.
Underneath the control, something is screaming. For an instant, I see what she sees.
A sliver of corridor, bodies in motion, the high ceiling of a different fortress.
Then it cuts off.
The echo stays in my body after the channel closes.
My arms are numb. Sophia's fear is still living under my skin.
I roll to the edge of the bed and gag on nothing as the feeling returns to my hands.
Rythar is already on his feet. I didn't see him move.
He's between me and the door, scanning the room for something to kill.
I try to stand. My legs fold. Rythar catches me before my knees hit the floor, one hand at the nape of my neck, the other locked around my waist, pulling me up and into him in one motion. I can feel his heart against my cheek. It's beating hard, but steady. Mine is racing.
“It happened again,” I gasp. “Sophia. I think they’re hurting her.”
He grunts. His jaw tightens. "Or someone wants you to believe they are."
"I felt it, Rythar."
"I know you felt it." His hand is still at my neck, thumb tracing my pulse the way he did the first morning on the rooftop when he made me drink water. "That does not mean it was real."
“I don’t know,” I croak. Either way, my body is still shaking from someone else’s fear.
The alarm pulses through the fortress.
“Is Vorak here?” I glance around, absurdly, like I might see him in Rythar’s quarters.
“Not here.” Rythar is already at the door, helmet under one arm, voice barking into a comm-band. I catch the words “eastern boundary” and “breach,” but I’m too lost in myself for the translation to work smoothly.
He turns to me, eyes burning. “It’s the family homes in the jungle. Proximity alarms are catching multiple intrusions.”
“The ones from other biomes?”
“Yes. I am responsible for keeping these mates and their offspring safe.” He pauses. “These are not attacks that I can ignore.”
I hug myself. “And this happens at the same time I feel Sophia being hurt.”
“It’s a trap designed to separate you from me. Stay in the inner corridor of the fortress. Do not leave until I return. Drenz will guard you.”
“What if it was real?”
“It does not matter. Elena. Do not risk yourself.”
If I stay, I betray Sophia. If I leave, I betray Rythar.
There is no version of this where I am not betraying someone. I nod, knowing Rythar will not agree to me leaving. And knowing that I must help Sophia, somehow.
He goes.
I sit on the edge of the bed and close my eyes, reaching for that thin, strange current.
Sophia.
I follow the memory of her mind the way I would follow the faintest scent in a crowded room. There was a hard edge beneath the fear. She had not been broken. Not yet.
Sophia.
I press into the space where the bride mark sits beneath my skin, feeling for the thread that ran from me to her.
For a moment there is something.
Movement. A taste of cinnamon in the back of my mouth.
Then nothing. The connection doesn’t snap. It simply isn’t there. I open my eyes, breath shuddering.
I try again and again, until my head pounds, but I can’t reach Sophia. I count my own heartbeats. Then breaths. Then the slow slide of light across the far wall.
There's no word from Rythar. He hasn't returned.
A tray arrives. Warm bread, roasted meat, fruit split open and glistening. My favorites. All of them. Rythar must have given the order before he left. The warrior who delivers it does not meet my eyes. He sets it down and bows.
I stare at the food. It smells rich and nourishing. Meant to keep me strong. Meant to keep the future alive.
When was the last time Sophia ate?
I manage a few bites before I’m brought back to the first meal I shared with Rythar. I close my eyes, tentatively reaching for the bond between us. But all I feel from him is the cold anger of war. He’s out there with serpent-panthers while I sit here.
I shove the tray aside and stand. Walk to the door. It opens at my touch.
Drenz is posted there.
"Don't you have other things to do?" I ask him.
"No." He doesn't even blink. "Rythar ordered me to stay with you."
"Did he bring antivenom?"
Drenz's mouth pulls flat. "He does not want it outside the fortress."
My stomach drops. If he's bitten again, the antivenom is here. And he’s far away.
Drenz is watching my face.
“There’s something wrong,” I say, stepping closer. “I can’t feel him the way I should. It’s muted.”
Drenz frowns faintly. “Muted?”
“Yes.” I press a hand to my chest, as though I could show him what lives there now. “Like the connection I have with him is being interfered with. What if something is wrong with him?”
He taps his comm-band, jaw tightening. His fingers move quickly, pulling up tactical feeds I cannot see. “I have been receiving reports from the Warlord and from the units with him,” he says. “They are advancing. They are intact.”
“Put him on.”
Drenz’s brow furrows. He adjusts the band again. “The direct line is not responding.”
Ice slides down my spine.
“But you just said—”
“I am receiving updates relayed through secondary units,” he says evenly. “Signal distortion is common in the outer canopy during intrusions.”
“That means something is wrong, Drenz.”
He eyes me warily. “It’s a common method of causing confusion,” he says reluctantly.
I squeeze my fists so tight that my nails dig into my palms. "Drenz." I step close enough that he has to look down at me. "Take me to him."
"No."
"Something is wrong."
"The Warlord cannot be defeated in his biome." He says it the way someone recites a prayer they've said too many times. "I will relay your message. Eat. Rest." The look on his face says he will stand in this doorway until one of us dies of old age.
I close the door and pace. Count breaths. Watch the light crawl across the far wall. The food grows cold. I lie on the bed and reach for Rythar through the bond. Nothing. Reach for Sophia. Nothing.
I exhaust myself with mental effort and doze.
The alarms rip me out of sleep. I rush to the door.
Drenz is already there. "Command center," he says. "Now. With me."