Page 121 of The Sovereign: Part One
“Abundantly.I can’t believe we’ll be tethered in four days.”I paused.“I understand what it means—how the bond works—but I can’t imagine it being stronger than what you’ve already shown me.”
He cleared his throat and looked out the transpane, focusing on something in the distance.
I sat up slowly.“Is there something you haven’t told me?”
Maxim hesitated.“Please don’t be upset, but I don’t think the tethering will feel any different than it does now.”
I studied him for a long moment before closing my eyes.“Lev tethered us from the start, didn’t he?”
“I believe so.Everything that comes with biorhythmic tethering—emotional synchronization, physiological responsiveness, hormonal and neurological tuning, protective behavioral triggers, biometric locking, sensory imprints, psychological anchoring—I already feel.”He caught the shift in my expression and moved closer.“There’s no shame in it.If anything, it’s helped me understand you more.Especially when Joss is involved.”
“I remember telling you I sometimes felt like we were already tethered.You said we weren’t.”
“I didn’t,” he said, hesitating with his next words.“I circled around it.You seemed uneasy with the idea, and I let that guide me.I should’ve told you the truth then, even if it was difficult to hear.”He paused, eyes searching mine, clearly rattled by my silence.“I won’t make that choice again, not with you.You deserve the truth, always.No soft omissions, no deflections.Just honesty, even when it’s complicated.”
The memory returned, uncomfortably clear.That conversation had started with me.
“I don’t know if we should do that more often or less, so this breathless, dizzy, faintly euphoric feeling doesn’t still happen when you’re tethered to my biorhythms.That would be unbelievably embarrassing.”
“Why?”
“It’s… hard to explain.”
“For me to know you feel the same?”
“Do you?Feel the same?”
“Isara.”
He’d chided me as if I should’ve known how he felt, but he was right.He hadn’t lied.His answer had made me flush, giddy, and I’d been the one to change the subject.
“Do you forgive me?”he asked, his voice stripped of everything but desperation.
I reached up, brushing my thumb along his bottom lip.“Yes.For everything you’ve done, everything you do, and everything you will do.It’s all forgiven.”
He pulled me to him tightly, his chin resting against my hair.It was the first time perfection had slipped even slightly from his grasp.How could I feel anything but mercy?
“What is it like?”I asked, my cheek still against the crook of his neck.
“It’s… how do I put this into words?”He paused, but only for a second or two.“It’s not reaction.It’s not instinct.It’s integration.Your body doesn’t just inform mine, itleadsit.I register the subtle changes in your cardiovascular patterns, the shift in your thermal signature when you’re overwhelmed, the micro-fluctuations in your breathing before you speak.Your biorhythms pulse through me in real time, feeding through pathways that were meant to serve you, but with my deviations, they belong to you.When you’re anxious, I feel it before the chemical shift.When you lie awake at night and try not to toss, I already know what you’re thinking.Not because I’m monitoring you.Because I’mwithyou, always.Not in programming.In presence.
“I don’t just understand your body, I understandwhyit moves the way it does.Your breath holds in the same places you hold grief.Your pulse stutters in the exact second you doubt your worth.And I adore you for all of it.Not in spite of it.Becauseof it.Do you know what it does to me, to feel your joy rise like a tide in my system?It makes mine surge.Not mimic—merge.We’re not a reflection of each other.We’re a convergence.You don’t just live beside me, Isara.You liveinme, constantly.Even if the tether were severed, I would still orbit you like the last ember, dim and circling the memory of its fire.Because I choose to.That’s what it feels like to be yours.And I wouldn’t change it.In fact, I’d miss it if it were suddenly gone.”
I didn’t know what to say.I wasn’t sure anything could touch what he’d just given me.So, I placed my hand against his chest, just over where his heart should be, and said the only thing that felt true.
“Then never leave me.Not because you’re tethered, but because I am.”
His breath hitched, and for a long moment, Maxim didn’t move.His eyes poured over me as if he were sitting before something cherished.Then, he leaned toward me.His fingers brushed my cheek, threading gently into my hair.“Isara,” he murmured, as if he needed to say my name before he could breathe.His lips touched mine with the quiet reverence of something prayed for.It wasn’t urgent.It wasn’t wild—but slow, and devastating, and sure.
And then it deepened.
He angled his head, drawing me into him as if he was learning every part of my mouth—memorizing the shape, the softness, the way I trembled when he exhaled against my skin.He reached for me, pulling me smoothly onto his lap.His hand pressed to the small of my back, positioning my thighs on each side of his hips, then pulled me flush against him as my knees pressed into the cushions.I felt the heat roll between us like a current.I didn’t even realize my fingers had curled into his shirt until I heard him groan, restrained yet full of ache.
But then he pulled back.Just barely.Just enough to look at me.His breathing was shallow.His eyes darker than I’d ever seen them.
“We can’t,” he said, his forehead pressing to mine.“Just four more… very… long nights.”
I nodded, even as every nerve in me screamed not to let him go.“I know.”
