The brand on my arm burned with every heartbeat.
I stopped looking at it after the first hour. The broken-chain mark was blistered and raw, the edges already turning angry red. The skin around it was puckered and raised, the flesh beneath still hot to the touch. Every pulse of pain traveled straight through the bond and landed in Darius like a second wound, a constant, unrelenting ache that seemed to have no beginning and no end. I could feel him trying to shield me from the worst of it, but the bond didn't care about intention. It simply shared.
He had stopped testing the chains. He simply stood, head bowed, breathing through the shared agony with the same stubborn control he used on a battlefield. His shoulders were set, his jaw tight. He was conserving his strength, saving it for what
