I waggled the bottle at him, the pills rattling. "You're certainly capable of swallowing pills. I could feed them to you like a sick puppy, but that would be an indignity."

"I could fight you off," he said, still smiling, his expression softening. "It would hurt, but I could do it. I don't even think it would be difficult."

With a sigh, I laid down on the bed next to him, scooting close to him. "Can we bargain for it?" I asked. "It will make me feel better to know you're not in agony, and all the science says that people heal better when they're not hurting. Something to do with stress hormones."

His hand came up and he draped his arm along my body, heavy and warm, his fingers sinking into my hair and stilling. "I'm not human. The science doesn't apply," Dain said, his expression of contentment not changing. He was happy, of all the bizarre things, lying there with stitches and bandages and zero pain medication.

Of course he is, I thought, looking into his soft golden eyes. Someone gives a shit if he lives or dies, for no other reason than that she likes his company. I ran my thumb along the inside of his lynx-like ear in a gentle caress, a smile touching my mouth as he relaxed under my touch. This was more than friendship, what we were doing right now. I knew it, and it should have scared me, but he'd saved my life and even if he wasn't actually on the brink of death, having seen him full of arrows and dripping with blood I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd almost lost him.

Part of me wondered if he'd kiss me, or say something about love or life that would make me want nothing more than to kiss him, but Dain didn't do anything of the sort. He'd promised to strive for friendship, and even after terror and pain he wouldn't break that promise. Couldn't. But I couldn't see any trace of resentment or unhappiness. Dain laid there, breathing slowly, love and relief in his eyes and his fingers in my hair, and he was happy.

If he kissed me, I wouldn't be able to say no to forever. I wouldn't even want to. Lying in bed with him after the nightmare of the morning, lost in the gold and black of his eyes, my old life seemed so very far away. Why did I even want to go back to rush-hour traffic and grainy dick-pics on dating apps? How could catcalls and internet ads stack up to someone who would literally take an arrow for me with no reward, then look at me with total contentment? Men in love songs always proclaimed such things, but Dain actually did them, with zero hesitation.