The cold went through him and came out the other side as something that wasn't cold anymore.
It was information.
The sprite's mana signature, its structure, the exact shape of the crack where it was tearing itself apart.
Soren could feel Selah's body underneath it, warm where it should have been warm and freezing where the sprite had dug in too deep, and he could feel the gap between them where the bond was supposed to be seamless and wasn't.
The gap was the problem.
The illegal early bonding had skipped three stages of the natural process, and the sprite's soul had been grinding against Selah's for months, now both of them were full of cracks that matched.
Soren didn't have the mana to fill those cracks.
He didn't have the rank, the training, or the tools.
What he had was the Primordial Tamer's Heart, which had already done one thing the system said was impossible, and the willingness to try a second.
He pushed his soul into the gap.
[DING!] — Soul Transfer initiated. Target: dual entity [Selah Young / Frostbite Sprite]. Transfer type: BRIDGE BOND.]
[DING!] — ERROR. This bond configuration does not exist in System records.]
[DING!] — ERROR. Generating new entry. Authorization: APPROVED BY UNKNOWN.]
The same unknown that had approved Grimm's transfer.
The cold in his hands turned into a buzzing heat and then into something he didn't have a word for.
Selah arched off the bed and grabbed his wrists and her grip was so strong he felt the bones shift.
The sprite's glow went from blue to white to nothing.
Then the sprite was gone.
Soren looked at Selah's chest where the sprite had been and it wasn't there anymore.
Selah's eyes were still open, still completely blue, and she was breathing hard with her hands locked around his wrists.
"Where is it," she said. "Where's Biseol?"
"I don't know."
"What did you do?"
"I don't know that either."
Her grip on his wrists got tighter and the frost on the walls started to retract, and Soren watched the frost travel up her arms and sink into her skin and disappear.
"Selah."
"I can feel her," Selah said, and her voice cracked in a way he hadn't heard from her before.
"She's inside me. She's... we're..."
[DING!] — Bond event complete. [Frostbite Sprite — Biseol] has undergone FUSION with bonded host [Selah Young]. Entity is now classified as [Ice-Fused Tamer]. This classification does not exist in System records.]
[DING!] — New classification generated. Ice-Fused Tamer: a human host permanently merged with a beast-type entity. Host gains beast abilities. Beast gains human cognition. Separation: IMPOSSIBLE.]
[DING!] — NOTICE: Bridge Bond detected between [Soren Kane] and [Selah Young]. Soren Kane is now registered as SECONDARY TAMER for fused entity.]
[DING!] — Obsession Index initialized: Selah Young 8/50.]
Soren read that last notification three times.
Then he sat down on the floor because his legs had stopped working and his nose was bleeding again.
"Soren," Selah said from the bed.
"Yeah."
"Why can I see a text that says I'm bonded to you?"
"It says that?"
"It says Bridge Bond. It says you're my secondary tamer. It says..." She paused. "It says Obsession Index: eight."
"Okay."
"What the hell is an Obsession Index?"
"It's a long story."
"I have time."
"But I don't. I'm going to pass out."
He looked up at her.
She was sitting on the edge of the bed with her hands in her lap and frost was blooming and dying on her knuckles in a rhythm that matched her breathing, her eyes had that white ring.
Selah looked different in a way he couldn't name because the room was getting dark at the edges.
"Your sprite isn't dead," he said. "She's you now and you're her… I think."
"You think?"
"I'll explain when I wake up."
"Soren Kane, if you pass out on my floor I am going to..."
That was the last thing he heard before passing out.
◆◆◆◆
Grimm caught him before his head hit the tile.
He didn't feel it, but he knew because when he woke up his head was on something soft and warm, Grimm's chin was resting on top of his skull.
She still couldn't talk.
She didn't need to.
The way she had positioned herself, curled completely around his body on the cold floor with her tail covering his legs and her flank pressed against his back, said everything she would have said if she could.
Mine. Hurt. Protected.
He opened his eyes.
The room was dark except for a faint blue glow from Selah's side.
Selah was sitting cross-legged on her bed with her palms up and thin lines of frost running between her fingers in patterns that moved on their own.
She was watching them with a face he had never seen on her before.
"How long had passed?" Soren said, and his voice came out rough.
"Three hours."
"That's not bad."
"Stop saying that! It's always bad."
She closed her hands and the frost disappeared.
"I can feel her," she said. "Not as a separate thing, as me. She thinks in blue and I don't know how else to describe it. When I breathe out, the cold goes where I want it to go now, not where it used to go by accident."
Selah looked at him.
"I can also feel you."
Soren went very still.
"It's faint but I know your heartbeat right now without looking and I know that your wolf wants to eat me for sitting this close to you."
Grimm's tail gave one slow thump on the floor.
"She's not wrong," Selah said. "The wolf. To want that. I am sitting close to you."
"Selah?"
"What."
"Are you okay?"
She stared at him for a long time.
"I have never been less okay and more alive at the same time," she said. "I think that's what you did to me."
[DING!] — Obsession Index: Selah 12/50.]
[DING!] — Soul integrity: 76%. Spiritual Friction aggregate: 26%. Two bonded entities now contributing.]
Soren closed his eyes.
Two bonds now.
Grimm at 49, Selah at 12, and his soul at seventy-six percent and falling.
Twenty-nine days to rank up or the numbers would eat him alive.
He was about to say something when the shadow under the bed moved.
Not Grimm's shadow.
A different one.
It peeled away from the wall and stood up, and it had a shape he recognized, and Grimm was on her feet with her teeth bared before the shape finished forming.
White hair, wolf ears with a skin so pale the veins showed.
Yara Hale stepped out of the shadow pool in the corner of the room and looked at Selah with red eyes and a smile.
"Hello, ice girl," she said.
Selah's hands were already up and the temperature in the room dropped ten degrees in one second.
Yara looked at Soren.
The smile changed.
It went from empty to full so fast it was hard to watch, and her red eyes went soft, and her voice dropped.
"Master," she said. "I told you I'd find you. You keep collecting women and you haven't even ranked up yet."
She tilted her head.
"How am I supposed to protect what's mine when you keep making it harder?"