AIDEN WOKE TO warmth where there should have been cold. For a few disoriented breaths he thought the fire must have caught again—spread from the ring of stones and crawled into his bones. Then he realized the heat was more focused than that, pressed along his chest and arm, rising and falling with a rhythm that wasn’t his—Orion.
The memory of the night slotted back into place: the slow settling of Orion’s breathing, the way he’d shifted in his sleep toward the nearest source of heat, Aiden hesitating for all of three heartbeats before sliding an arm around his ribs to keep him from rolling onto his bandaged back.
He hadn’t meant to fall asleep like that; he’d only meant to keep watch.
Aiden tried to ease his arm back. The movement was careful, measured, the way a man might lift his hand away from a skittish animal, but Orion stiffened. Not from pain—Aiden knew what that sounded like now—but from awareness.
