We’ll find a way together.
24
MY HAMSTER GROWLS LOUDER THAN THAT
Andrik POV-
I wake like a beast dredged from the deep. Slow, disoriented, limbs heavy from the exhaustion that branded its name into my bones long before sleep claimed me.
I scent her before I even open my eyes—honeysuckle, soft and alive. Kai’velvorin. Kai’saelûn. Etra’morin.
Her hand is still buried in my hair.
My breath catches. I don’t move. The fire is little more than embers now, glowing orange in the hearth. Snow still drifts past the windows. The storm hasn’t stopped, but it’s gentler—like it knows we’ve both had enough.
She’s asleep. Really asleep this time. No fever, no twitching. Her body curled around mine like she’s trying to protect me. One arm draped over my shoulders, the other forgotten in my hair.
I swallow hard. I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve her.
I keep my head on her lap, but my gaze lifts gradually—just enough to watch the slow rise and fall of her chest. My mark still shimmers faintly in the dim light, delicate and divine, like frost lit from within.
My jaw tightens. A dozen thoughts crawl through me—self-loathing, guilt, obsession, fear—but one rises louder than the rest:
She stayed.
I press my forehead to her ribs, just beneath her heart, where her warmth feels strongest.
“I’ll make it right,Saelûn,” I whisper, voice so low it’s barely a sound at all. “Whatever comes. Whatever’s left of me—I’ll give it all.”
I stay wrapped in her, and for the first time since being brought into this frozen, haunted world, I let myself truly believe I might not be alone in it.
It begins as a whisper, like the first curl of smoke from a sleeping fire.
Tiny spikes of estrous blooming in her scent. The change drags hunger to the surface. Heat prickles along my spine. I’m hyperaware of her body pressed flush against mine. The hitch of her breath with every movement—We’re getting closer to a bond-induced heat, and on top of that... her ovulation. Fertility bleeds from her skin like a summons. And Thalûn, I want to answer.
Three days.
Thrahk ves’veylrûn. Nash kai’orin.
I won’t be able to hold back—neither of us will.
The bond pulls tight in my chest, taut and impatient. It remembers how close we came, but I won’t let it win until she’s safe.
My thoughts are pulled elsewhere... him.
No name. No scent. Moving throughmyforest without tripping my awareness—that has never happened before.
The trees didn’t whisper. The Gods didn’t intervene, and that terrifies me more than anything.
I can’t leave her, but I have to find him. The bond won’t wait much longer, and when her heat and human cycle align?—
Kael’thurin ves thalûn.
I press a kiss to the spot just beneath her ribs, at the center of my mark.
“Kairûn esh velorin. Esh Saelûn. Nash ves’torin skar.” (She is my salvation. My soul bond. I will not let the dark touch her again.)
Lumi—
