Page 29 of Third

She frowned. “What is it?”

No answer.

“Tor’Vek.” When he remained silent, she pushed harder. “Tor’Vek, answerme!”

His eyes remained locked on the data. The golden light of the screen reflected in the violet planes of his irises, making them shimmer with eerie luminosity. They looked unblinking, inhuman—like the data wasn’t just being read, but absorbed, computed, folded into some deeper, colder logic he hadn’t yet decided to share.

She sat up, heart thudding. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Silence.

She swung her legs off the table and stood. Her voice cracked. “Tell me.”

He looked at her then. Finally. And when he spoke, it was low, absolute.

“You are perfect.”

“And that’s somehow wrong?”

“No one is perfect. It is impossible.”

The words hollowed the air betweenthem.

Anya’s mouth opened. Nothing came out. Her knees threatened to buckle, and she clutched the edge of the exam table, her fingers digging in as if clinging to the only thing in the room that hadn’t changed. Her mind tried to reject the words, to rewind time by seconds, minutes—anything to erase the impossibility of perfection. The hum of the scanner, the sterile brightness of the room, even the warmth left by the healing light—all of it vanished under the deafening silence betweenthem.

“Did he do something to me?” She turned away from Tor’Vek and began to pace, arms wrapped tight around her middle. “Did he change something in me?”

“Unknown.”

She kept pacing. Each step tugged her farther from him, and each time, the bracelet flared. Not with heat—yet—but with pressure. As though cautioning her. As though punishing the space betweenthem.

Behind her, she heard him exhale—sharp, disciplined, but edged with something wilder. Like a predator restraining its lunge. The sound wasn’t a sigh. It was a warning. Asignal that his grip on control was slipping, inch by inch, heartbeat by heartbeat.

When she reached the far wall, the bracelet pulsed again. Aburst of red-gold shimmered at her wrist. She froze.

A breath later, she felthim.

The bond surged.

He was across the room in seconds.

He didn’t speak. Didn’task.

He grabbed her wrist—not to hurt, not to dominate. To connect himself before the fire inside consumed them both. His fingers closed around her with a desperation that wasn’t frantic, but deep-rooted, elemental. She felt it through the bond—his need to hold something real, something steady, while everything else within him threatened to detonate. Letting go wasn’t an option. Not for him. Notnow.

The red in his bracelet ignited like flame.

His eyes turned molten.

He stripped off her shirt in one motion, fluid and deliberate. The fabric skimmed over her skin and hit the floor in a whisper, but everything inside her screamed. Her breath caught in her throat. Not from fear—but from the raw intensity rolling off him in waves.

The room felt smaller, hotter. Her heart thundered. Part of her wanted to push him back, to get space and air and clarity. But the other part, the one thrumming in sync with the bond, couldn’t stop staring at him. Couldn’t ignore the way her skin prickled where he touched her. Couldn’t forget what it felt like when the craving overtook them both. She should pull away. She didn’t. She couldn’t.

“What are you doing?”

“I told you,” he said roughly, “I need your skin on mine.”

Anya tried to protest, to speak—but he was drawing her to him again, his hands firm and urgent, like the space between them had turned toxic and fast, like the only way to stop the burn was to bury it inher.

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