He Fought Our Soulmate Bond, But His Pain Led Me Straight To Him

The silence of the library was a comfort, a familiar weight that settled over Elara’s shoulders as she slid a copy of Wuthering Heights into its designated space. The scent of old paper and binding glue was her constant companion, a perfume she preferred to any other. She reached for the next book on her cart, her fingers tracing the worn gold lettering on its spine, when the first tremor hit.

It began not as a thought, but as a purely physical sensation. A sudden, sharp clenching in her gut, as if her stomach had been seized by an icy hand. Her breath caught, the air freezing in her lungs. It was anxiety, potent and raw, but it was not hers. Her own worries were soft, muted things—the overdue notice she’d forgotten to mail, the leaky faucet in her kitchen. This was different. This was an echo from him.

Elara leaned against the towering shelf, closing her eyes and letting the feeling wash through her. For a moment, she was submerged in it. A prickling fear ran up her arms, the kind that came from standing on a precipice, staring down at a dangerous drop. Her heart hammered against her ribs with a frantic rhythm that belonged to another body, another life. She had learned over the years not to fight it, but to simply listen to the story it told. He was facing something. A challenge, a risk. She pictured him on a construction site high above the city, or perhaps preparing for a difficult presentation in a boardroom full of sharks.

Then, just as quickly as it had come, the tide turned. The icy grip on her stomach loosened, melting away into a slow, spreading warmth. The frantic pounding in her chest slowed, settling into a deep, steady rhythm. In its place came a wave of pure, unyielding determination. It was a feeling as solid and real as the wooden bookshelf beneath her hand. It straightened her spine, pulling her shoulders back. The phantom fear dissolved, replaced by a quiet, focused calm that was so intense it felt like a low hum beneath her skin.

A slow smile touched Elara’s lips. He’d done it. Whatever the challenge was, he had met it head-on and was now moving forward with that unwavering resolve she had come to know so well. She felt a swell of something warm and proprietary in her chest—a ghost of his pride, perhaps, mingled with her own. She had never seen his face, never heard his voice, but she knew the shape of his courage. She knew the grit of his will.

She pushed the cart to the next aisle, the residual strength still thrumming through her veins. It was a strange and intimate magic, to live a life intertwined with a ghost. But she wouldn't have it any other way. It was a promise, whispered across the distance between them, that she was never truly alone.

Across town, the scent of pine and cedar filled Rhys’s workshop, a sharp, clean smell that usually cleared his head. He ran a hand plane over a length of maple, the blade peeling away a perfect, paper-thin curl of wood. The rhythmic scrape and the resistance of the grain under his hands were his meditation, the one place where the world simplified into pressure and precision.

Then it came. A sudden, sour knot of anxiety tightened in his chest, completely foreign. His breath caught. His heart began to beat a frantic, unfamiliar rhythm. It was her. The unwelcome tenant in his soul. He gritted his teeth, his knuckles whitening on the handle of the plane. It was like a thief slipping into his house, rearranging the furniture of his mind. He hated the vulnerability, the sheer helplessness of it. He was a man who built things, solid things he could control with his own two hands, yet he had no defense against this invisible intrusion.

He pushed the plane harder, faster, trying to sweat the feeling out, to drive it away with sheer physical effort. He focused on the burn in his shoulders, the strain in his forearms. He would not give in to this phantom panic. He would master it, crush it under the weight of his own will. His work was his fortress, and he refused to let her trespass. The anxiety was a high-pitched whine in his skull, a distraction that threatened the clean lines and perfect joints he demanded of himself.

Just as he felt he was pushing it back, the emotional tide shifted. The knot in his chest dissolved, replaced by a slow, creeping calm. It was worse than the anxiety. It felt like a drug, dulling his edges, softening the anger that was his shield. This placid determination felt like weakness, like surrender. The sharp focus he’d been fighting for was suddenly blanketed by this soft, serene feeling that was utterly alien to him.

Frustration, hot and potent, rose in his throat. He wanted his own feelings back, even the jagged, difficult ones. This imposed peace was a violation, silencing his own internal monologue with her saccharine tranquility. He stood over the workbench, the muscles in his jaw aching from tension, his body flooded with a sense of calm that made his skin crawl. It felt like being possessed, his own fierce spirit smothered by a stranger’s quiet contentment. He hated her for it. He hated the bond that forced it upon him.

He snarled under his breath and reached for a chisel, needing the demanding precision of carving to claw back his own thoughts. He braced a small block of oak in the vise, intending to carve a delicate mortise. His focus narrowed to the razor-sharp edge of the steel, the point where it would meet the wood. He needed this control, this absolute concentration.

And then, a new wave struck him, utterly different from the last. It was a sudden, brilliant burst of delight. It was pure and sharp, like the peal of a tiny silver bell inside his skull. It was a feeling of simple, unexpected pleasure—the discovery of a forgotten photograph, the perfect turn of a phrase in a book. The emotion was so bright and so completely at odds with the dark cloud of his own anger that it felt like a flash of lightning in a windowless room. It startled him, a full-body jolt of surprise that made his muscles twitch involuntarily.

In that single, lost second, his hand jerked. The chisel, which had been poised perfectly over the wood, slipped. It skated across the surface and bit deep into the fleshy part of his left palm at the base of his thumb.

A white-hot, electric pain shot up his arm. It was a clean, vicious slice. He gasped, dropping the chisel with a clatter. Blood, shockingly red against the pale wood dust on his skin, welled up instantly, overflowing the gash and dripping onto the workbench. The pain was immense, a searing, blinding agony that eclipsed everything else.

Simultaneously, in the hushed quiet of the history aisle, Elara cried out.

The sound was sharp and wounded, tearing through the sacred silence of the library. A searing, slicing pain exploded in her left hand. It was not a phantom ache or a dull throb. It was a direct, undeniable violation—the feeling of sharp steel parting her own skin. She could feel the specific path of the blade, a burning line across the soft flesh of her palm. Her fingers went numb with the shock of it. The heavy stack of art history books she was holding tumbled from her grasp, crashing to the polished floor with a series of echoing thuds that made a nearby patron jump.

She stared, breathless, at her own hand. She clutched it to her chest, her heart hammering against her ribs. The skin was smooth, perfect, unmarred. But the pain was real. It was agonizingly, vividly real. She could feel the sting as air hit the open wound, the hot, wet pulse of blood that wasn't there. Tears sprang to her eyes, blurring the spines of the fallen books.

This was different. She had felt his injuries before—the dull ache of a sprained ankle, the deep throb of a bruised rib. Those sensations were always muted, filtered through the static of distance. They were echoes. This was not an echo. This was a scream. The signal was perfectly clear, terrifyingly immediate. There was no distortion, no fading at the edges. It was as if he were standing right next to her.

He had to be.

The pain was a live wire connecting them, humming with a voltage she had never experienced. He was close. So close that the barrier between their bodies had all but dissolved. A new feeling rose up through the pain, the same determined calm she had felt from him earlier, only now it was her own. The pain was a beacon. And she was going to follow it.