The movement was small.
I was in the window seat at the river window — his window, which had become ours in the specific way of things that are shared so consistently they lose their original possessive — with a book and the afternoon light and the particular quality of quiet that had become the compound's default when nothing was actively requiring attention.
The small warmth below my ribs moved.
Not the steady warmth I had been carrying. Not the pulse of the bond or the bloodline's ambient presence. Something else. Something that came from inside the warmth rather than being the warmth itself.
A flutter.
Small and specific and unmistakable.
I sat very still.
It happened again.
I set down the book.
Pressed my hand flat.
The warmth there — present as always, patient as always — a
