Page 179 of Claimed by the Ghost Warrior

That was where the comparison ended.

There was something harder about him.

Not bigger.

Denser.

His body looked trained for efficiency rather than appearance. Old scars crossed his ribs and abdomen. One along his side was wider than the others, pale beneath the darker gray of his skin.

Not decorative damage.

Serious.

Maybe the kind of wound that changed more than skin.

I should have been tending to the injuries. That was what I did. That was what I knew how to do.

Instead I stood there like an idiot, holding a medical strip, staring at a male who could probably break me in half with one arm, and thinking about the exact shade of gray where his shoulder met his neck.

His ŭre gave a slow pulse beneath the skin of his chest, faint and gold, and my own pulse answered before I could tell it not to.

The fresh cut ran diagonally across his lower ribs. Darev had sealed it temporarily after the attack, but Veyr had reopened part of it by doing something entirely reasonable, like carrying weapons and refusing to rest.

My fingers brushed the skin just below his ribs. The moment they made contact, every muscle in his body locked. Not in the rigid way of a man bracing for a blow, but in the absolute stillness of a predator halting mid-breath.

My own breath hitched. His eyes, fixed on some point across the room, didn’t waver, but I felt his awareness snap to that point of contact like a targeting system.

I watched the smooth gray skin beneath my fingertips, waiting for the faint gold pulse of his ŭre to flare in response. It remained dark, a quiet sea.

The air left my lungs in a slow, silent stream.

Veyr looked down at me. “You expected a reaction.”

“No.”

“You did.”

“I was hoping your alien electricity would behave.”