ASHER
I didn't sleep, not even for a minute. I sat on the floor of my room the entire night with my back against the bed frame and my knees pulled to my chest and my eyes fixed on the middle distance while the bond pulsed in my chest like a second heartbeat that refused to stop no matter how many times I willed it to.
Every time I closed my eyes I saw his face, the way his eyes had gone red, the way his hands had been shaking against the wall on either side of my head.
The way his voice had dropped into something quiet and certain and completely without mercy.
As long as I exist and as long as you are mine.
I pressed the heel of my hand against my sternum and breathed through it.
The bond was still there. Stronger than before, if anything. Whatever he'd done when he said those words, whatever it meant to reject a rejection and bind the bond tighter, I could feel it. Like a thread that had been fraying had been rewound and knotted and pulled taut.
Rejecting him hadn't worked.
