Elucien Parallels in the Book
I didn’t know if someone could monitor such things—the silent messages between mates. Not when the mating bond could be scented, and I was playing such a dangerous game with it.
Everyone believed it had been severed, that Rhys’s lingering scent was because he’d forced me, had planted that scent in me.
They believed that with time, with distance, his scent would fade. Weeks or months, likely.
And when it didn’t fade, when it remained … That’s when I’d have to strike, with or without the information I needed.
But out of the possibility that communicating down the bond kept its scent strong … I had to minimize how much I used it.
He left the rest unspoken. Because her mate was here, sleeping a level up. Because her mate had been in the family room and Azriel had needed to stay by the door the whole time because he couldn't stand the sight of it, the scent of their mating bond, and needed to have the option of leaving if it became too much.
The funniest thing is that during the entirety of the Winter Solstice scene, Elain and Lucien only had one interaction. Lucien gave her his present, and she barely thanked him.
And yet, the mere sight of them and the scent of their mating bond is strong enough to make Azriel want to leave. In ACOWAR, Feyre reminds us that the mating bond can be scented. It was the same during the Hybern confrontation when Feyre wondered why Rhys was barely moving to avoid the scent, and how it was explained in ACOWAR that she said the scent would eventually fade, knowing that it wouldn't.
SJM really tells us in a few words that Elain and Lucien still have their bond. She tells us there is something there, especially when she had Rhys switch to allude to Azriel as an aggressor that Lucien is made to defend against.
I've said before that I do think they use the bond more often than what was said. Even before Feyre accepted her own bond, Rhysand could already feel her emotions and her thoughts.
SJM had Elain and Lucien's bond snap in another book. There really is no reason why she couldn't have Elain reject it in another book if she wanted to. She could easily recap why Elain did it and how she did it, to begin her healing journey with one of the difficult decisions over, allowing her to solely focus on the consequences, followed by Lucien doing the same. Happily Ever Afters is SJM's main goal, after all.
Instead, she made sure Elucien's only interaction together involved Lucien gifting her something similar to what she had worn previously while trying to hide his longing that made Cassian's heart strain, which was also a nod to Jamie's present to Claire during their wedding night, and Elain hiding from the one person who has a direct bridge to her soul.
And later, in the bonus chapter, she focused more on Azriel's attention to the mating bond, as opposed to Elain herself.
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