Page 74 of Beastkin
He shook his head, his fingers tightening around mine. “I felt you, Karrick. Even in the darkness, I felt you calling me back. Our bond...” He paused, his eyes taking on that distant look that meant he was feeling something through our connection. “It’s different now. Stronger.”
I nodded, feeling it too, the heightened awareness of him, like he was somehow closer to me than ever before, despite the physical distance between us. “Caden said you were changing. That your magic was doing something to you.”
Phoenix looked down at his free hand, turning it over curiously. Small flames danced across his fingertips, but they weren’t just orange anymore. They shimmered with gold and blue, colors I’d never seen in his fire before.
“I feel different,” he admitted. “Like something was burned away inside me.” He met my eyes again, and I saw a new confidence there, a certainty that hadn’t been there before. “The last thing holding me back from being completely yours.”
I couldn’t hold back anymore. I gathered him into my arms, pulling him against my chest as gently as I could while still satisfying the desperate need to feel him, whole and alive and mine. He came willingly, his smaller frame fitting perfectly against me as if he’d been made just for this purpose.
“I thought I’d lost you,” I murmured into his hair, breathing in his scent, smoke and cinnamon and something new, something wild and untamed that hadn’t been there before. “When you collapsed, when the bond went silent... I’ve never been so scared in my life.”
Phoenix pulled back just enough to look at me, his hands comingup to frame my face. “You’ll never lose me,” he promised. “Not now. Not ever.”
Then he was kissing me, and it was like the first time and nothing like the first time all at once. His lips were familiar but the magic that sparked between us was new, desperate, and powerful.
It felt like a new beginning and a promise that we’d always be together.
Epilogue: Phoenix
Christmas Eve
“Gods your mom is so cool,” I said, my fingers laced with Karrick’s as we stepped off the porch into the snow-covered landscape surrounding his parent’s house. “She’s ridiculously nice.”
“You’re just saying that because she’s been feeding you homemade cookies for three days straight,” he grunted, grinning from ear to ear.
“Well, yeah,” I laughed. “And she’s not locking me up in my room like some fairy-tale princess, so that’s a plus.”
Karrick smiled, but he didn’t laugh. He was still a bit uncomfortable with me making jokes about how awful my parents had been to me. But I liked making them. It helped me process years of abuse in a more positive way.
“I’m surprised you wanted to go for a walk,” I added, pressing myself close against his warm, fuzzy body. “It’s cold as hell out here.”
“Mom wanted to make dinner,” he replied, wrapping his arm around my waist. “And there’s something I wanted to show you.”
I raised an eyebrow, squeezing his massive hand. “Something you wanted to show me? That sounds mysterious.”
“It’s not mysterious,” he said, though the way his ears twitched told me he was being evasive. “Just... something from when we were kids. I thought you might remember it.”
My heart did a little flutter at that. Ever since we’d gotten back together, Karrick had been slowly sharing pieces of our childhood that my parents had stolen from my memory. Most of it came back in fragments, the smell of pine needles, the sound of his laughter echoing through the woods, and the feeling of safety I’d had when we were together. But despite all the magic in the world, there were still gaps, holes in my past that ached like phantom limbs.
“Lead the way,” I said, trying to keep the excitement out of my voice. Every recovered memory felt like a gift.
We trudged through the snow, our breath forming clouds in the crisp air. The forest around his family’s property was exactly like I remembered it from our recent visits, tall evergreens dusted with white, the sound of our footsteps muffled by the blanket of snow beneath our feet. But as we walked deeper into the woods, following what looked like an old deer path, something started to feel familiar in a way that went deeper than recent memory.
“This way,” Karrick said, guiding me toward a cluster of massive pine trees. Their branches hung so low and thick that they created a natural shelter underneath, the ground beneath them relatively clear of snow.
I ducked under the branches behind him and stopped short. There, nestled between the massive trunks, was a structure I recognized with a jolt that went straight to my core. It was a fort, not the elaborate tree house kind, but the ramshackle, thrown-together kind that kids make with whatever they can find. Branches woven together with old rope, a tarp stretched across the top that had seen better days, and what looked like a few wooden crates arranged as furniture inside.
“Oh my god,” I breathed, my hand flying to my mouth. “We built this.”
“You remember?” Karrick’s voice was soft, hopeful.
The memories came flooding back all at once, so vivid and real that for a moment I felt like I was ten years old again. Summer afternoons spent dragging branches twice my size while Karrick, even then bigger and stronger than me, hauled the heavy logs into place. The satisfaction of weaving smaller branches through the gaps to make walls. The way we’d argued over whether the entrance should face east or west before compromising and making two entrances.
“The secret password,” I said suddenly, grinning up at him. “It wasdragon firebecause I was obsessed with dragons, and you thought it sounded cool.”
Karrick’s answering smile was so bright it could have melted all the snow around us. “You do remember.”
I stepped closer to the fort, running my fingers along the weathered wood. It was smaller than I remembered, the way childhood places always are, but it was still standing after all these years.