He shut that thought down fast. That line of thinking needed its own containment zone.
Instead, she looked straight ahead, lips pressed into a line, and she said, “Promise me you’ll never get in my head again.”
“Done,” he said instantly. Because he absolutely assumed she meantwhen she was awakeand sure, he could avoid her conscious mind. A little emotional ambient reading? That didn’t count. That was like checking the forecast before a picnic. He was so in the clear it was almost laughable.
She opened the door, and so did he.
“I’ll see you at the library,” she said over her shoulder. “If you haven’t fixed your issue yet.”
“I’ll be there,” he replied.
They got out, doors shut, and the sound echoed a little too loudly in his chest.
He gave her the keys, careful not to touch her. And he watched her go, silhouetted by porch light and shadows, her shoulders still tense beneath the weight of the night. He watched her as she reached the door on the ground floor. As she unlocked it. Stepped inside. The light flashed from the window.
Only then did he exhale.
The warmth she’d left behind still lingered at his side, as if her presence didn’t know how to let go yet.
He walked away.
The town around him was quiet, tucked in for the night. Christmas lights blinked faintly across rooftops. Somewhere nearby, wind chimes clinked together. And then, without ceremony, he let go of his form. Skin dissolved into mist, bones into nothing. And he was fog, sighing into the cold air like a ghost remembering its name, curling into the darkness, weightless and watching. Hunter rose into the sky and turned toward the Dreamscape.
Time to work.
But damn if he didn’t take a long, slow path back.
Just to pass by her window one more time.
~*~
Hunter wasn’t sure where he was.
One minute, he’d been monitoring the outer edges of her sleeping mind.
Then...
He was in her dream?
Why was he in her dream, not in a Dream Devil fashion? Who brought him in?
Dream Devils and Dream Weavers alike could initiate a dream sequence. In the easiest cases, they slipped in through the cracks, built the environment, and shaped the story. It wasn’t standard protocol; usually, they waited for a request, a trigger, something the human soul unknowingly called for, but yes, technically, they could override it when needed.
This was not that.
This was something else.
Because okay, yes, maybe he’d been hovering around the edges of her consciousness. Just monitoring. Lightly. Nothing invasive. Definitely not in her head the way she’d define it.
But now he wasn’t outside, or skirting, or anything. He was fuckingin.
Inside the dream.
Not as an agent or a nightmare guide.
No, no. He wasstarringin it.
And he was fucking real. He felt his limbs, his heartbeat, the drag of emotions clawing their way up his throat. This wasn’t a projection. This wasn’t her subconscious wearing his shape like a coat. This was him. As if she had called him. Commanded him. Wanted him there.
