"The eastern feeds are showing increased activity near—"
"Ambrose." I lower him to the ground, keeping my arm behind his shoulders. "The eastern feeds will still be there in six hours. You won't be if you keep this up."
He tries to argue, but his body betrays him. His eyes are glassy, his hands trembling too badly to form contract symbols even if he wanted to. Centuries old and undone by two days without sleep and the stubbornness to keep working until his body quits.
I make a decision. When I healed Stellan in the canyon, something new opened up in my abilities. I didn't just transform the damage, I generated something, created essence from the process of transformation itself. I've been turning the idea over since then, wondering if it was a one-time thing or if I could do it deliberately.
I press my palm flat against Ambrose's chest and push.
The opposite of hunger. I reach for the energy I've been converting from everyone's fear and anxiety, all that raw emotion I've been processing and refining, and I feed it into him. His eyes widen and his hand comes up to grip my wrist.
"What are you doing?"
"Taking care of family. Shut up and accept it."
The energy moves between us, and I can feel him more clearly than I ever have. The exhaustion goes deeper than I realized, layered over fear that's even deeper than that, buried under the constant grinding need to be useful because somewhere in his centuries of existence he learned that his worth is measured in what he produces. He's terrified that if he stops working, stops contributing, the rest of us will realize we don't actually need him.
"You matter even when you're not working," I tell him. "You know that, right?"
His laugh is thin and watery. "I'm starting to believe that."
"Good. Now sleep. That's an order from your demon in-law, or whatever we are."
His eyes close before I finish the sentence. I keep my hand on his chest, feeding him a slow trickle of refined energy, watching the tension drain from his face as real sleep takes hold for the first time in days. Stellan drapes a blanket over both of us without a word. Rumi takes watch.
I sit with Ambrose's head resting against my thigh and wonder when I became the kind of person who takes care of people instead of feeding on them. The bonds where Skye and Harlow should be pulse faintly in the distance. Whatever they're doing at the sanctuary, they're holding on.
The night passes slowly. Ambrose sleeps deeply for the first time since the death realm took our mates, and I keep my hand on his chest through all of it, a steady trickle of refined energy flowing between us. Rumi sits at the edge of our camp with his wings folded and his eyes on the treeline, and at some point Stellan curls up against my other side, his fire dimmed to embers, seeking warmth that has nothing to do with temperature.
Tomorrow we push the final stretch.
I close my eyes and let Ambrose's steady heartbeat under my palm keep me grounded until sleep takes me too.
We break camp before dawn. Ambrose wakes steadier than he's been in a while, the refined energy still working through his system, and he squeezes my arm once without saying anything as he shoulders his pack. Rumi takes point, his wings catching the first light. Stellan walks beside me, close enough that our arms brush with every step.
Phoenix Sanctuary is less than a day away if we truly push. The bonds from Skye and Harlow grow stronger with every mile, shifting from muffled echoes to something closer to real presence. The fear bleeding through even at this distance is enough to make my hunger sit up and pay attention.
Fuck, I hope we make it.
15
Stellan
Thebondsexplodebackto life on the morning of the third day as we near Phoenix Sanctuary, and I nearly set the grass on fire. With Skye and Harlow, suddenly present and close after two days of muted distance that felt like trying to hear a conversation through a wall, I can’t hold back my essence.
The sensation is so overwhelming that heat rolls off me before I can control it, singeing the ground at my feet brown. Jade grabs my arm, his hunger steadying the surge, and for a second all four of us just stand there on the trail, breathing hard, feeling ourmates at the other end of the bonds like a heartbeat we'd been straining to hear finally coming through clear.
"They made it," I say, and my voice cracks on the second word.
All four of us tighten our grips around our packs and sprint the final miles toward Phoenix Sanctuary. Rumi takes to the air, his wings carrying him faster than the rest of us, and I push my fire into my legs for speed I shouldn't be able to sustain. Something has been helping us these last two days, a current of strength woven into the network that none of us generated, and I can feel it now, the entity's quiet insistence that we arrive in time.
Whatever ancient presence attached itself to Ambrose's network, whatever Harlow has been communicating with, it's been helping us. Not overtly, not in any way I could have pointed to and named. More like a hand at our backs when the wind should have been in our faces, a warmth in the bonds that kept us going when exhaustion should have stopped us. Mother Nature told us the six forces were meant to combine. The entity, it seems, agrees.
Skye and Harlow are waiting at the gates; however, something is wrong. They’re not injured, but there’s something different in a way that makes my fire flicker with unease before my brain catches up to what I'm seeing. Skye's aura carries threads of pale cool light woven through it that weren't there before, traces of something cold and still that I associate with Harlow's essence. And Harlow, who has always flickered at the edges of solidity, carries traces of warmth in his aura that make him look more present than I've ever seen him. Whatever happened in the death realm, they came out the other side carrying pieces of each other.
Skye doesn't wait for us to reach the gates. He meets us halfway, before he pulls Jade against him, and then reaches over to kiss Rumi's check. He reaches out to grip my hand, holding so hard I feel the bones shift. He reaches Ambrose last and takes hisface in both hands and kisses him, like he's trying to memorize the shape of his mouth. Ambrose makes a sound against Skye's lips that's somewhere between a laugh and a sob, his hands fisting in the back of Skye's shirt, and when they break apart his eyes are wet.
"Don't ever do that again," Ambrose says, his voice rough.
