Serena could feel it through their matebond. The emotions flooding from Fin's chest into hers were so layered and so compressed that separating them was trying to untangle a knot made of wire.
Anger. Hurt. Betrayal. Grief. Jealousy. Something that might have been guilt and something that might have been recognition and something underneath all of it that was old enough to predate language and had been sitting in Finnick Shadowclaw's chest long before he had the name to give it.
She tried to push calm into him through their matebond. A deliberate, steady pulse of reassurance, the way he had done for her a hundred times. In the bath. On the floor. In every moment where her world was falling apart and his calm was the only thing holding the pieces together.
Mistake.
The calm did not take.
Anger flooded back through the matebond so fast it hit her sternum like a fist. She wasn't sure if the anger was solely at her or at the situation.
