Chapter 45
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
MILO
The walk back to the den was quiet.
Calder stayed close enough that his arm periodically brushed mine, close enough that if I slowed even a little, he slowed with me. The forest had settled after Fen left, but my head hadn’t. His words stayed with me, turning over and over until I could barely hear anything else.
Lila. He loved her, so he waited–he thought there was enough time. And then there wasn’t.
I kept replaying the way Fen had said it—no sugar-coating, no hiding things. She had been human. She had gotten sick. He had known there was something he could do, something that would have changed everything, and he waited too long.
That was the part I couldn’t let go of.
By the time we reached the den, I still hadn’t said much. Calder ducked inside first, one hand brushing my back as I passed by him. The touch was light, familiar now, but it still did something to me every time, especially after the word we’d shared and everything we’d done.
The den felt warmer inside, safer. The furs still held the shape of where we’d slept, and for one stupid second I thought maybe if I stayed there long enough, I wouldn’t have to ask anything at all.
Maybe I could keep the question in my head and pretend it wasn’t there, pretend Fen hadn’t dropped it between us like a scorpion and just left us to deal with it.
But Calder knew me too well already. He watched me for a moment before he said, “You are too quiet.”
I wrenched my attention away from a particularly interesting speck on the wall. He stood a few feet away, watching me with that sharp, steady focus of his that made lying feel pointless.
“I’m fine,” I said automatically.
His expression didn’t change. “You have not stopped turning this over in your mind since he left.”
I huffed and looked away again, but not because I was trying to shut him out. It was just easier to think when I wasn’t looking directly at him, easier to say something difficult when I wasn’t looking directly at the one I loved and thinking about what I might be asking of him.
He closed in then, enough that I could feel the heat of him at my side before; his hot palm rested against the back of my neck. It wasn’t possessive or coercive. It was just there, warm and solid, the way he had learned to be with me when he wanted the truth.
“Say it,” he quietly requested.
The invitation should have made it easier. It didn’t. It just made it impossible to keep pretending I wasn’t replaying the same words over and over in my head.
I swallowed once, then looked at him. “What Fen said—about her.”
Calder didn’t interrupt. He didn’t pretend not to know which part I meant either.
I saw the moment he understood exactly where my thoughts had gone, so I went on before I could lose my nerve.
“He said she would have lived if he hadn’t waited.” My voice came out rougher than I expected. “He said there was something he could have done sooner.”
Calder didn’t say anything, but his hand stayed where it was and the silence, more than anything, confirmed my thoughts.
I held his gaze, because there was no point skirting around it any longer. “What does that mean for me?” I asked.
For a second, I thought he might deflect. Not avoid it—he’d stopped doing that—but give me something partial, something careful enough that it wouldn’t land too hard.
He didn’t.
His thumb brushed against the back of my neck, a small, grounding movement, and then he sealed the sliver of space that remained between us. I could feel the heat of him through my shirt.
“You are asking if what happened to her…” he began, voice low. “If it could be different for you.”
I nodded. “That’s not exactly how I said it in my head,” I admitted.
“But yeah. That’s what I’m asking.” I drew in a breath, then let it out slowly, because there wasn’t any point in softening it.
“Fen said she would still be alive if he had acted sooner,” I continued.
“He didn’t say it like a theory. He said it like a fact.
” My eyes stayed on his. “So humans can become like you.”
Calder watched me carefully after that, his hand unmoving against my face. Then I said the part I hadn’t been able to stop thinking since Fen opened his mouth. “You could do that to me.”
Something in Calder’s expression changed then—small enough most people probably wouldn’t have noticed it, but I did.
Fear.
Not of transforming me, of losing me before he could even respond to the request.
Calder’s hand moved, taking my jaw in a firm grip.
“Yes, it can happen.” He held my gaze, making sure I heard him properly, that I understood what he was actually saying.
“But not the way you’re thinking. It isn’t something done lightly.
It isn’t something done because it’s easier than losing someone.
” His thumb brushed along my cheek, then stilled.
“And it is not something I would decide for you.”
I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry. “So you could,” I said again, quieter now, just to be sure I wasn’t building something in my head that wasn’t really there. “But you wouldn’t just… do it.”
“No.” The answer came quickly. “Not without your permission. Not without fully understanding what it means for you.” He leaned in a fraction then, enough that our foreheads touched.
“And not because you’re afraid of what you might lose,” he added, voice softer now but no less certain.
“That is not the reason to take something like that.”
His warm breath caressed my lips, grounding in a way that made it hard to look anywhere else but at him. “It changes everything. Time, how you live–what you leave behind.” His hand stayed at my jaw, holding me there without pressure. “It isn’t something you reach for in a moment like this.”
I let out a slow breath and leaned into him a little more, my hand coming up to his chest, feeling the steady rise and fall there, grounding myself in something that wasn’t just a question spinning out of control in my head.
“I’m not asking you to do it,” I whispered. “I just... needed to know.
Now that I did, the rest of it felt heavier somehow.
My life isn’t only here,” I said quietly. “There’s still a version of my life waiting for me outside these woods.”
His hand didn’t move from my face, and he didn’t interrupt.
“Chicago is still mine.” Saying it aloud made the truth heavier somehow.
“My work. The business. I’ve got people depending on me—clients booked months out, two assistants who have been loyal and hardworking for almost a decade.
” I huffed out a breath, not quite a laugh.
“They’ve been keeping everything running without me for weeks already,” I admitted.
“I’m still trying to decide whether I’m impressed or offended.
” My thumb brushed absently against him.
“And my parents…” I hesitated there, not because I didn’t know what to say, but because I did.
“We’re not close, you know that, but they’re still there.
It’s still something I’d be walking away from, whether I like it or not. ”
I swallowed, then shook my head, more to clear it than anything else. “And Elias,” I added. “We just… found our way back to each other. I don’t even know what I’d say to him. ‘Hey, by the way, I’m not aging anymore, but don’t worry about it?’” A breath left me. “That’s not nothing.”
None of it was.
That was the problem.
I lifted my eyes back to Calder’s. “If I choose something like that,” I said, holding his gaze, “it’s not just me I’m choosing for. It changes everything around me too.”
He knew that. I could see it in the way he watched me, the way he didn’t try to soften any part of it or pretend it would be easier than it was.
For a second, neither of us spoke, then Fen’s voice cut back through my thoughts like it had been waiting there.
“He thought he had time,” I repeated.
Calder’s hand stilled slightly against my jaw.
“He knew what he could do. He just… didn’t do it yet.” I exhaled slowly. “And then it was too late.” I shook my head. “He was that close and he still lost her.”
The words settled between us, heavier than anything I’d said before.
My hand flexed against Calder’s chest. “I don’t want you to become another immortal being carrying around human-shaped grief forever.”