The sanctuary of the Master Suite was a lie. The gold-leafed walls were still weeping, the obsidian mirrors were still shattered, and the air still hummed with the ghost of a frequency that had nearly leveled the estate. But for those few hours in the aftermath of the solar flare, wrapped in the silk and the salt-scented heat of Kaelen's embrace, the world outside had ceased to exist.
I watched him as he pulled on a soft, dark tunic. He moved with a newfound fluid grace, the Phoenix blood in his system acting like a celestial fuel, but his eyes... his eyes were still soft, still hazy with the memory of his own surrender. This was the man who had moaned into my neck, the man who had admitted to being a "biological disaster" because of my touch.
I reached out, my fingers grazing the scars on his forearm. Through the Deep-Bind, I could feel the rhythmic, steady pulse of his heart, now a perfect mirror of mine. We were no longer two separate entities. We were a closed loop.
