His fingers brushed the side of my neck first, light and trembling. Then they crept higher, searching blindly until they found the soft edges of my earlobe.
Kasey’s touch was barely there, more of a cling than a gesture, like he needed one more point of contact to stay grounded.
His breath hitched against my throat, but he didn’t pull away. He didn’t seem to fully be aware of what he was doing, only that he needed something to hold onto.
I stayed perfectly still. Not because I was startled, but because I understood exactly what this was. It was a frightened, exhausted boy reaching for comfort.
His fingers curled gently around my lobe, not tugging, not exploring. Just holding. Just anchoring.
I let out a slow steady exhale. “My sweet boy.”
At my words, Kasey relaxed even further, melting into the support I offered.
Chapter 21
Kasey
My awareness came back in pieces. Small, disjointed and almost dreamlike.
At first, all I felt was warmth. The steady rise and fall of Evander’s chest beneath my cheek. The slow grounding drag of fingers through my hair. The quiet, unhurried silence that didn’t demand anything from me.
I didn’t want to move. Not now. Not ever.
When was the last time someone held me like this? Just held me without expectations or consequences? I tried to remember but the memory wouldn’t come. It had been too long. So long that the idea of comfort felt foreign, like I’d only dreamed about once and forgotten.
Another shaky sniff. Another deep breath. My body sank further into the warmth around me, clinging to it like it was the only thing keeping me upright.
For a brief moment, safety settled over me. Real safety. The kind I hadn’t felt in years. Not since Lockswell, not since everything I was had been stripped away piece by piece.
But then, the thoughts started creeping in. The ones I never wanted. The ones that always found me anyways.
I shouldn’t be in anyone’s lap, least of all an Alpha’s. Not like this. Not for comfort. That wasn’t something I was ever taught to expect.
At Lockswell, closeness wasn’t offered. The touch wasn’t gentle. Comfort wasn’t earned.
It was the first thing taken away, stripping from me long before I understood what it meant to miss it.
Hugs, soft words, a hand on my back. Those were luxuries I learned to stop hoping for. No number of tears or begging had ever changed that. My well-being had never been a priority. Survival was. Enduring was. Learning how to live through pain and emptiness without completing was drilled into me.
The memory of that training crept in next, cold and familiar. My body reacted before my mind could stop it.
I stiffened, bracing for the moment I’d be pushed away, or the moment I’d force myself to pull back and remember my place.
But the worst part, the part that scared me most, was the truth whispering underneath all that fear.
Right now, held like this, I didn’t want to move. I would have done anything,anything, to keep this warmth around me. I wanted to stay exactly where I was, on this hold that made the world feel quiet for the first time in years.
And wanting that felt wrong. Wanting that felt like stepping off a ledge with no idea where the ground was.
But I didn’t let go. If anything, I held on tighter.
My body remembered too well what happened when I cried or begged, how every sign of distress had been met with punishment instead of comfort.
The marks on my back were proof of that history. Thin raised lines that never fully faded. Other scars, too, lingered. All reminders of the first time I fought back against something I didn’t understand and didn’t want.
My body was marked with tales of what I learned, but none of it was close to what this Alpha was offering right now.
I learned quickly that resistance only made things worse.
