“You mentioned... shifting. What does that mean?”
I watch the war behind his eyes. Every second of silence feels like a lifetime.
“Please?” I whisper
“I’ll tell you, Lumi,” he says at last. “I’ll tell you whatever you need to know—if you promise it won’t change the way you look at me.”
“Andrik,” I say, nearly laughing, You’re literally a giant snow beast. And yet...I’m still here.”
A sound catches in his throat, then the great, hulking creature in my lap folds in on himself.
He doesn’t move for a long time. Just counts my heartbeats under his breath. Quietly, as if he’s afraid of scaring me off, he begins to speak:
“We—my kind, the Rhavari—we aren’t born like you. We don’t crawl from a womb or grow in stages. We are summoned.”
I stay perfectly still while I listen.
“When the gods need a Guardian, they exhale through a snowflake, and the forest catches it… and we appear.”
He swallows.
“We are forged for one purpose, and I've spent my entire life chasing it. We’re isolated things, Lumi. We come into existence alone, fully grown, although inside we are just children. We don’t belong. We don’t have families—just... instinct and magic.
“We were made to be monsters—destined to stand at the edges of your world and weigh your kind for eternity. That is our purpose."
His voice cracks on the next breath.
“The only thing that keeps us from tearing ourselves apart is the discovery of our true mate—a bond so rare it’s considered a myth. Most of my kind never find it. Most... go mad—driven to insanity by the unclaimed bond. It festers—eating away at us, piece by piece, until we’re trapped in our beast form. Until we're nothing but instinct, slaughtering anything in our path just to silence the ache. Eventually, our heart gives out.”
I don’t breathe.
“The gods created us for power, not for love. They didn’t care if we broke trying to survive it. Which is why what we have—what you are to me—is a miracle.”
He finally looks up, his eyes are luminous with something feral.
“I knew the moment your foot touched my snow that you were my Saelûn—my soulbond.You are the only thing that’s ever done more than hollow me out with loneliness. You are the first thing that’s ever made me want to be more than a weapon.”
The air thrums between us.
“But you don’t feel the bond with the same primal intensity,” he continues, voice rough. “For me, it’s a hunger that claws at me from the inside out. Sometimes the beast rises before I can shove him down. He doesn’t want to hurt you, Lumi… but he doesn'twant to let you go either. He wants to claim you. To mark you with our scent. To erase the concept of before.”
His voice falters. “I am trying—gods, am I trying—not to smother you with the sheer weight of what is building inside me.”
His head bows, shoulders trembling.
“And I will keep trying... until you ask me to stop.”
I study his eyes. He looks so vulnerable. His confession still hangs in the air between us. And there it is again—that chilling, aching pull. The unshakeable feeling that we’ve done this before.
He looks exhausted, not just physically, but soul-tired.
A hundred questions are circling my mind right now, but none of them matter when he’s lying next to me with those big, stormy eyes pleading with mine.
So I don’t speak.
I reach up, fingers brushing his jaw, as he trembles beneath my touch, a full body shiver, like I’ve knocked something loose inside him.
“I’m still here,” I whisper, rising to my knees. “And I don't see you any differently, Andrik.”
