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His skin was a little warmer now. The color no longer so deathly. But he still didn’t stir.

“Stay with me,” she whispered, eyes stinging. “Don’t you leave me like this. Not when I finally?—”

She didn’t say it. But her magic did.

It surged, stronger than before—drawn from a place deeper than blood or bone.

Love.

Power bloomed from her palms like spring through frost. The air snapped and crackled, the leaves overhead trembling in a gust that didn’t belong to weather.

Rollo’s breathing steadied—fragile, but real.

Then the magic snapped back, hard.

Delilah cried out, nearly collapsing over him. Her arms shook with exhaustion, her forehead pressing against his shoulder.

“You idiot,” she whispered, voice wrecked. “You could’ve died.”

Again she heard the whisper, “Time is short. You have exhausted your efforts.”

“Our efforts.”the three voices sang together.

“I understand,” she pleaded. “But I had to save him. He’s mine. He can’t die.”

“So be it. You’ve been warned. But you are ours and we will need balance restored.”

A steady thrum of breath came from Rollo’s massive chest. It wasn’t enough. He was alive—but he needed shelter. Healing. And she couldn’t carry him alone.

She pulled herself upright, lifted her chin to the canopy, and called out—not with words, but with will.

Forest,she begged.Please. Help me get him home.

The silence that followed was absolute. Then the roots beneath Rollo shifted. Vines coiled under his back—gentle, like cradling arms.

The ground itself seemed tobreathe, and slowly—inch by sacred inch—it began to carry him down the slope.

Delilah walked beside him, one hand resting on his chest, the other still glowing weakly.

She didn’t know what would come next.

But he was alive.

And this time, she wasn’t letting go.

26

ROLLO

Pain came first.

A low, heavy pulse behind his ribs like the echo of thunder after a storm. His limbs felt leaden, thick with sleep—or magic. Maybe both. Something inside him stirred—his bear, sluggish but alive.

Then the scent hit him.

Cedar. Sage. And her.

Delilah.