Three days later.
The heat had passed.
The world still existed.
Damian's section.
He was tired in the clean way.
Not the exhausted running kind of tired.
Not the tired of a person who had been managing something at considerable cost.
The rested kind.
The kind that came after a long held breath finally released.
The kind that came after years of something and then: the thing itself.
He woke up slowly.
The room around him.
The morning.
The bond between them — he felt it before he opened his eyes.
Warm.
Fully settled.
Something that had found its shape.
Not the searching warmth of the weeks before.
Not the urgent pull of the heat.
Something quieter.
Something that had arrived at what it was always going to be.
He lay still.
He thought about what the bond felt like now.
He had read about this.
Dr. Yuen had described it in the clinical language.
Post-completion bonding.
