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“What are you thinking?” I asked quietly.

He didn’t answer right away, his jaw shifting slightly as if he was working out something in his mind, choosing his words carefully. Finally, he answered, “I’m thinking… how strange it all is.”

I tilted my head, intrigued. “Strange?”

His hand, still resting on my back, began tracing slow circles. “For so long, I only knew how to tear things apart. Break them down.” His eyes flicked to the scarred knuckles on his other hand, a ghost of his past lingering in the way his thumb brushed over them absently. “It always felt like that was all there was for me. Destruction. I could cleave a man in two, raze a home to the ground… and it was easy.” His voice was raw, the words heavy. “But this,this…” He brought his eyes back to me, his hand pausing its gentle movement on my back. “Creating something. A life. A place that feels like… like it could last—”

He broke off, his throat tightening at the end, but it didn’t feel like fear. It felt like awe.

I lifted my hand to trace the edge of his jaw, feeling the faint roughness of stubble beneath my fingertips. “That’s not who you are now.” The words were soft, but they carried the weight of truth we had both come to understand. “You’re building. We’re building. And it’s strong.”

His dark eyes flickered across my face, and though the look of awe remained, it was now mixed with something deeper, something more certain. He didn’t have to say anything more. Neither did I.

There were no grand declarations left to make. We had already spoken with our hands, our hearts, every day since we'd met atthat forge. No matter what came next, it would be ours. Built, not from stone or metal, but from something far stronger.

I pressed my lips to his chest, breathing in the burning warmth of the hearth from his skin—the scent of steel and ash, of earth and fire—inhaling the makings of home.

And for the first time in longer than I could remember, the future, whatever it was, didn’t feel like something to face. It felt like something that was already here. Lying beside me in the flickering light, with dusk deepening around us, and laughter echoing softly outside our window, against the call of the night.