The pain did not arrive like an injury.
It arrived like a memory.
Sudden.
Intimate.
Unavoidable.
Elara's fingers tightened weakly against the thin blanket beneath them as something inside her chest seized hard enough to drag a broken gasp from between her teeth.
Ugh—
The monitor beside the narrow bed answered with a stuttering spike that climbed too high—then dipped too low—before correcting itself with a mechanical chirp that sounded almost offended.
Her breath came shallow.
Not because of the restraints along her wrist.
Not because of the antiseptic stink that clung to the room like judgment.
But because the bond—
Had finally stopped pretending it could be ignored.
It burned now.
A low, steady pressure beneath her ribs that pulsed in time with something far away.
Something furious.
Something bleeding.
"Ouch…"
