She barely got the words out, breath catching between each one. "But he can’t just, leave? Why can he reach me and not get himself out? Dimitri, what’s happening to him? What is this Mist? Is it hurting him? Is he?"
Dimitri’s jaw went rigid against the top of her head. She felt it in the shift of muscle, the pause that told her he was weighing how much of the truth she could carry. But he gave it to her anyway.
"I don’t know." Three words, and the grief packed into them nearly matched her own.
"None of us do. That’s the honest answer, Bug. So we find out, what the Mist actually is, how it’s holding him, whether we can haul him loose from our side instead of waiting for him to claw his way out from his." He made a loose fist in her hair, not tight, just possessive, his thumb tracing slow lines along her scalp.
"But I will not sit on my hands over this. We dig. We hunt. I’ll turn every last team upside down and shake them till answers fall out. I am not leaving him in there."
"But he’s alive," she said again, because it was the only stone in the river solid enough to stand on without the current dragging her under.
"He’s alive," Dimitri echoed, and though he didn’t raise his tone, it landed like a verdict. "And he loves you enough to fight his way into a sealed space just to leave you a scrap of paper. That man doesn’t quit, and neither do we."
She laughed. It came out wrecked, all tears and something close to embarrassment, and she scrubbed at her face with the heel of her hand, only smearing the mess worse. She didn’t pull away from him, though. Not an inch.
The note stayed crushed in her fist. Her grip had pressed creases into it, thin as thread, but the ink hadn’t bled a drop. Lucan’s handwriting was as precise as the man himself, every stroke measured, restraint written into the shape of each letter. She read it again, mouthing the words, trying to press them into her bones.
It didn’t matter that his face had gone soft at the edges in her memory, or that the clean bite of his cedar-and-black-pepper skin had thinned out over the weeks. Lucan was alive. Lucan was thinking of her. And if she’d ever doubted, if she’d ever lain awake wondering whether she was loved or merely useful, the buffer, the healer, the shiny thing dug out of the rubble—this burned that fear to ash. He’d defied a thing that bent time and space itself just to say her name.
Not goodbye, she decided. She wouldn’t let it be goodbye. It was a vow with his fingerprints on it. She didn’t know how long she stayed there, trembling against Dimitri’s chest, her pulse hammering to escape her skin. Inside her sanctuary the air held still, nothing but her own ragged breathing and the low rumble rolling up from somewhere deep in his ribs.
Then Damien returned, his coils whispering over the carpet, a steaming cup cradled in those long, clawed hands. His gold-flecked gaze found hers, unreadable as ever, but he set the mug down beside her with a tenderness that undid her, the handle turned just so, angled for her fingers. It was an old-world thing, chipped at the rim, "I ♥︎ Sydney" printed across it in faded tourist ink.
She nearly sobbed at the sight of it.
"Drink," Damien murmured. "It will help."
She did. Too sweet, exactly how she liked it. Too hot, scalding her tongue. Perfect. She curled both hands around it and let the heat seep in through her palms.
Damien’s forked tongue flicked once. "It was the least offensive option. The other said ’World’s Okayest Fisherman.’" A laugh punched out of her, wet and startled, and she pressed the back of her wrist to her mouth. "You considered it, though."
"For you?" His head tilted, that slit-pupil regard steady on her face. "I considered everything, pet."
Dimitri stayed wrapped around her, one hand splayed on her back, the other coming to rest atop the note in her lap like he needed to feel its weight for himself. Damien’s tail, cool and heavy, looped once around her right ankle, part anchor, part tether, all his. The three of them sat on the floor of her little world like survivors keeping vigil, no words traded because none were owed.
For a stretch that felt like forever, Felicity simply existed, held upright by the bodies of her pack. What filled her chest had outgrown grief, or even joy. It was a fierce, aching gratitude, the strange arithmetic of a world that stripped her bare and then, in the same breath, pressed something impossible into her open hands.
Her whole life narrowed to a single point of certainty. She would get Lucan back. Whatever it cost. Slowly, the tears wrung themselves out. Her breathing evened. The shaking ebbed into a hollow, bone-deep tiredness that scraped her raw without emptying her. She sipped her tea, hiccuped once, and let herself sag back into the solid wall of Dimitri behind her.
When she looked up, Damien had settled onto his coils across from her, his expression as unreadable as ever—but his gaze had gone gentle in the way only her men ever managed for her.
"We’re going to get him," she said, rough but steady now.
"We are," Damien agreed.
Dimitri’s grin flashed white against his fur. "There she is. That’s my fox." He caught a loose curl at her temple, tucked it back with a knuckle, let his thumb trail the curve of her ear before he dropped his hand.
"Come on. Let’s go tell the others before Tommy floods the kitchen wondering where you went."
By the time she stepped out of her pocket, face scrubbed raw and her lids swollen pink, the house was already crackling with it.
Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!
Use arrow keys (or A / D) to PREV/NEXT chapter