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[ A/N: MASS RELEASE! Multiple Chapters coming out TODAY!!! ]
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Alexander Abyss stood under the spray of cold water and stared at the tiled wall like it had personally offended him.
The chill filled the bathroom and clung to his black hair, ran down the sharp lines of his face, and slid over the lean muscle of his shoulders and chest.
The water was almost too cold, but he had made it that way on purpose, because cold was supposed to shock thoughts away.
It was supposed to make the body loud enough that the mind went quiet. At least, that was what he had hoped.
But it definitely wasn’t working for him currently.
Every time he closed his eyes he saw her again.
He saw Zara, those beautiful dark black eyes staring at him, mole under her eye, her eyes wide open the last time he had seen her recently.
Her black hair was loose and messy, spreading all over her face and shoulders and below, illuminated by the morning light.
Her cheeks were flushed a deep, impossible red that made his heart skip a beat every time he imagined her face.
The way she had looked at him in that flustered state still lived behind his eyelids, which still made his blood rush downwards in places he did not want it currently going.
The Zara he knew was the one who always stayed in control, always a step ahead, always a little too knowing.
She was the kind of woman who could turn a whole room with one quiet glance and still find time to be playful about it afterward.
...And yet she had been flustered.
Alex dragged a hand down his face and water streamed between his fingers.
He forced his breathing to slow.
’Do not think about it, Alex! Do not think about the way her lips parted,’
’Do not think about the sound she made,’
’Do not think about anything that happened thirty seconds before you walked into this bathroom!!!’
His body disagreed with every word.
He turned the temperature lower until the spray bit.
*hiss*
Yes, that was better.
The cold was useful.
The cold was simple.
He planted both hands on the wall and let the water hammer the back of his neck.
*Splash... splash...*
Carefree or not, this was the kind of moment that demanded focus.
Right now the only threat was his own imagination, and he was losing the fight.
He felt the bond pulse.
It had always been there since the Shadow Bonding took hold.
A quiet, constant awareness of Zara’s presence, mood, direction, rough emotional temperature.
Never this clear, never this loud.
Tonight it was loud.
He could still feel her.
Even with a closed door and the cold spray between them, her emotions bled through the link like warm ink.
Flustered and sill, the sharp, bright edge of embarrassment had not faded.
Underneath it something else moved.
Thought and concentration, a restless, searching pressure.
Alex frowned, water ran into his eyes, he blinked it away.
She was looking for something.
Not casually, but urgently, the bond carried the feeling the same way it carried her heartbeat when she was close: as a low, steady insistence.
Search, find, need, her attention kept skipping from one place to another inside the room beyond the bathroom door.
’What is she even looking for this hard?’
He tried to ignore it.
He really did.
He turned his face into the spray and counted the tiles.
One row. Two rows. Three.
The searching feeling only grew sharper.
Alex exhaled through his teeth.
The bond had never worked for speech.
Emotions, yes.
Vague impressions, sometimes a strong enough feeling could travel the other way if he pushed.
He had done it before in combat, short bursts of warning or reassurance.
Never full sentences, never clear words.
Still.
He focused on the link, clean and direct.
’Hey Zara, what are you looking for?’
The thought left him cleanly.
He felt it travel.
For a moment the bond seemed to open wider, like a door that had always been half-closed.
Then nothing.
No answering emotion.
No flicker of acknowledgement.
No soft pulse of recognition the way it usually came when she sensed him reaching.
Seconds stretched.
Alex kept his hands on the wall.
Water kept falling.
*Drip... drip...*
The cold kept biting.
The silence inside the bond felt wrong.
Too empty, too complete.
He almost pulled back.
Then her voice arrived.
Not a feeling or an impression, not even the usual blur of emotion that sometimes carried the shape of a word.
Actual voice.
Clearly inside his head, warm and startled and unmistakably hers.
’Alex...? Did you just talk in my head?’
The sound hit him harder than any physical blow.
His body locked.
For one blank instant his mind refused to process what had just happened.
The bond had never done that.
The bond was not supposed to do that.
Voice was speech.
Speech required air and lips and distance.
This had none of those things.
This was pure thought made audible, dropped straight into the center of his skull.
His balance went.
One foot slipped on the wet tile.
*Squelch—*
His shoulder hit the wall.
*Thud!*
He went down hard on his back, the impact knocking a sharp breath out of him.
*Whump.*
Water continued to pour over his face and chest.
The sound that left his throat was pure reflex, half-pain, half-shock, and it travelled through the bond before he could stop it.
A short, involuntary hurt noise that was not words at all.
’Ow...’
On the other side of the link he felt her react instantly.
Surprise first and then something warmer, amusement, bright and sudden.
Her voice came again, clearer this time, threaded with laughter she did not even try to hide.
’Heh... Did you just fall?’
Alex stared up at the ceiling through the falling water.
Black eyes wide, black hair plastered to his forehead, heart hammering against his ribs hard enough that he could feel it in his throat.
*Thump-thump. Thump-thump.*
’What...’
The single thought was all he could manage for a second.
Then the rest of it crashed in.
"What is happening," he said out loud, voice rough from the impact and the water. The words also travelled somehow, half-spoken, half-thought, messy and loud inside the bond.
’How can something like this happen?’
He could feel her on the other side.
She was still flustered underneath the laughter and still searching for whatever she had been looking for.
And now, layered over everything, a sharp spike of her own surprise.
The bond felt different, wider, deeper.
Like a door that had been stuck for years and had finally, without warning, swung all the way open.
Alex stayed on the wet floor for another breath, water streaming over him, *splash... splash...*, and tried to decide whether this was the best or worst possible moment for the Shadow Bond to decide it wanted to become something more.
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End of Chapter 98: Zara’s Voice In My Head!?
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