Morning after a siege did not feel like morning.
It felt like the thin, ringing silence that follows a blow hard enough to stun the air itself. I woke to the pull of the bond before I fully opened my eyes—Tristan already conscious beside me, already monitoring the channel between us with the same relentless focus he had carried through the night. His rib bandage was a pale band under the sheet. The claw score beneath it would heal. The knowledge that Kael had orchestrated both the ridge and the house assault as a single, coordinated test would not.
“You’re projecting again,” Tristan murmured, voice rough from too little sleep. “Guilt. Stop.”
“I’m not—”
“You are. I can feel it. You are sorting through every minute I was gone and assigning yourself responsibility for the shape of his tra
