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I’m also not dead. Because Theo isn’t just pretty. He’s lethal. Unapologetically so. He fought like the world owed him something, and that beast had dared to delay payment.

I don’t want to need him.

But I do.

And right now, I’m just glad I’m not alone.

My shoulder brushes his. It’s not intentional, not at first. I’m just tired. Spent. But when I don’t pull away, when I don’t catch myself and pretend to keep space between us, he shifts slightly. Just enough. His arm slides around me like it was supposed to be there all along.

No teasing. No line delivered in that lazy, cocky voice. He just lets me lean.

His body is warm, even soaked. His chest rises and falls steadily beneath the ragged cloth stretched across it. He smells like iron and smoke and that same wrong magic this realm has sunk into everything, but under that, there’s stillhim. Theo. Desire. Quiet, terrifying power wrapped in a grin and a body that’s too comfortable with killing things that shouldn’t exist.

His fingers move just slightly on my shoulder, a small, steady drag across the fabric of my coat. Not possessive. Not even intentional. Just human.

I press into him more without thinking. My forehead near the side of his throat, hair sticking to my cheek. It should feel strange. It should feel like giving in.

But right now, it just feels like rest.

He turns his head, his jaw brushing against my hair. His breath ghosts the top of my head, then stills, like he doesn’t want to move too much, like he’s afraid of waking me even though I’m not asleep.

We sit like that, wrapped in the aftermath, in the quiet that only happens when something massive stops trying to kill you and the world hasn’t yet decided what to throw at you next. The water behind us is still. The trees ahead bend inward, forming a dark mouth of a path we’ll have to follow soon. This place doesn’t pause long. It only lulls you so it can watch you fall harder.

But for now, in the crook of his arm, against the mess of his heartbeat, I let myself breathe. And I think, just for a second, that maybe I don’t hate him quite as much as I did when this day started.

“You’re getting cozy,” he says, voice low, curved with a smirk I can’t see but feel against the top of my head. “Not that I blame you. I do radiate comfort and survival.”

I don’t roll my eyes. I don’t pretend to be offended. I just stay where I am, my body tucked against his, pressed into the warmth of him like I meant to crawl there. Maybe I did.

He lets out a soft breath that could be a laugh if he cared less. “You’re not even gonna deny it?”

“No,” I murmur.

His fingers graze the outside of my arm, barely there, like he’s checking I haven’t already pulled away. I’m tired of pretending I have anything left to prove. I just watched him rip a beast in half with his bare hands and a weapon made of smoke and intent. I’m too bruised, too wrung out, too sick of this realm to fake detachment. And maybe it’s the exhaustion, or the loss, or the way the water is still dark behind us like it’s waiting for a second round, but right now, I’m not in the mood to pretend I don’t want to be close to something alive.

He leans in closer, and this time I feel him, not his weight, not his body, just the warmth that drips off his words when he lowers his voice like that.

“I knew it,” he says, but the tease isn’t sharp. It’s soft-edged. Warm. “You like me.”

“I need you,” I correct.

“Mm.” His lips are close now. “And that’s different.”

I let my eyes fall shut. Just for a moment. Just long enough to forget how ugly this place is. The ache in my legs. The bitter echo of Brashir’s voice in my head, telling me what I’ve already lost. All of it fades a little with his body around mine like a shield that knows how to kill for me. Not out of duty. Just because I was in the way.

He brushes a hand through my hair. Not roughly. Not like he’s trying to prove something. It’s careful. Almost reverent, like he doesn’t trust himself with the gesture. His fingers slide slowly through the damp strands, detangling where he can, pausingwhere he hits a knot, like he’s memorizing the shape of me by touch.

I freeze at the tenderness of it. That’s what does it. Not the fighting, not the violence, not the heat. This. The way he’s trying not to tug too hard. The way he’s quiet now, not because he’s out of things to say, but because something fragile just unfolded between us and he’s afraid if he breathes too loud, it’ll vanish.

I open my eyes and tilt my head, just enough to see him. His hair is sticking to his forehead in wet curls, eyes bright and watching me like I’m the dangerous thing now. Like I’m the unpredictable one.

“What was that?” I ask, barely a whisper.

He blinks, slow, deliberate. “What?”

“You just did something sweet. Are you dying?”

His mouth tilts, one side higher than the other. “Maybe.”