The Lycan King’s Broken Mate
That’s the shape of it — a restrained, eager force.
The healers lean over me. Their hands are gentle and practiced, moving with the kind of confidence that only long experience can teach, yet there is a tenderness threaded through each motion, as though they fear that even a single thoughtless touch might shatter what the world can scarcely bear. They trace the curve of my hips, the span of my ribs, the hollow beneath my belly with slow, sure fingertips. They murmur to one another in an old tongue I do not know — or perhaps it is not a tongue at all but the echo of ancient incantations, syllables older than the memory of bricks, and their sound vibrates against the stone and settles in my bo