The awareness came before thought, before memory. It wasn’t emotional yet. It was physical. The other side of the mattress was empty. For a split second, his body reacted before his mind caught up. His hand slid across the bed, palm open, fingers splayed, searching for weight and warmth. The reflex startled him. His fingers brushed nothing but linen that still held the faintest trace ofheat.
He stopped breathing.
Then he forced himself to inhale slowly, the way he did when something inside him threatened to move too fast. He let his hand rest where it had landed, pressed flat against the sheet, grounding himself in the texture. Egyptian cotton. Cool. Familiar.
The room lay quiet around him, washed in early morning light that filtered through the blinds in thin, pale bands. The ceiling above him was unremarkable. Smooth. White. Trayed. The sort of ceiling you didn’t look at unless you had nowhere else to put your attention.
The air smelled faintly of her shampoo.
That hit harder than the emptybed.
The scent was clean and soft, something floral without being sweet, layered lightly over the sharper edge of his own soap. Domestic. Intimate. It should have been comforting. Instead it seemed like proof. Evidence that she had been here. Evidence that she had chosen not to be herenow.
She had slept besidehim.
That mattered.
She was not here when hewoke.
That mattered more.
Alaric closed his eyes and let the awareness settle fully, without reachingfor meaning yet. Identify the disruption. Acknowledge it. Do not let it dictate response. He’d learned early that if you allowed emotions to surge ahead of discipline, you lost control. And once control was gone, everything else followed.
He had never liked waking alone.
Not because he required company. Not because he needed reassurance. He was more than capable of being alone. But absence registered as loss, and loss demanded attention. Loss wanted something from you. He preferred problems that could be acted on. Absence simply existed, inert and accusatory, impossible to confront.
Nakedness sharpened everything.
Without clothes, there was no barrier between his skin and the cool air, no familiar armor to slip into. He rolled onto his side and pushed himself upright, feet touching the stone floor. The chill grounded him immediately, pulling him fully into hisbody.
The house was quiet.
Not the peaceful quiet of rest, but the kind that carried expectation with it, as if the walls themselves were holding their breath. The kind of quiet that suggested something had already happened and was waiting for him to catchup.
Too quietfor thehour.
He glanced at the clock automatically. Early. Not unreasonably so. The kind of early where the world hadn’t fully decided what it was going to demand yet. He resisted the urge to get up and go looking for her. Whatever distance existed between them right now had not been accidental. It had been deliberate. Necessary, perhaps. Painful certainly.
It didn’t change the larger truth.
Sera was still here. Still in his life. Still close enough that her absence registered like a bruise beneath theskin.
Alaric stood and crossed the room, muscles tightening as he moved. Containment was habit. Reflex. He had learned early that if you hesitated, you lost ground. He didn’t intend to lose ground this morning.
A shower would help. Water always did.
He stepped beneath the spray and let it strike his shoulders hard, the heat immediate and almost punishing. The sound filled the small space, drowning out the silence. Sensation replaced thought. He braced his hands against the tile and bowed his head, breathing slowly through his nose, counting without numbers, letting the ritual steadyhim.
Control first. Meaning later.
The phone rang.
The sound sliced through the rush of water like a blade.
Alaric straightened instantly, pulse spiking not with fear but recognition. No one called him at this hour without reason. He shut off the water and reached for a towel, wrapping it around his waist as he crossed the bathroom, leaving dark footprints across the stone floor.
He answered on the fifthring.
