Chapter Four
The human kept talking to the dark.
Cillian was crouched on the rooftop across from Julian’s building, his form barely corporeal, more suggestion than substance. Cold wind passed through him, and yet he didn’t feel it. Below, through the fourth-floor window, Julian sat bathed in lamplight, speaking to shadows that couldn’t answer.
Except Cillian could answer. Just through watching, he’d learned so much about his mate, and now Julian had touched his token, it was almost as though he could read Julian’s thoughts.
He’d gained so much information, but for Cillian, it still wasn’t enough.
His shadows were straining toward the glass, desperate to manifest, to wrap around his beacon and announce their presence properly.
“No,” Cillian whispered. The sound scattered like ash.
He’d been in the same position since dawn, watching Julian wake and stretch and move through his small space as he went about his day.
Every gesture he made was economical, every movement had purpose.
Even the way Julian made coffee followed a specific sequence of events - grind the beans, measure the water, and then wait exactly four minutes.
Beautiful. It was all unbearably beautiful.
The shadows coiled tighter around Cillian’s chest, squeezing. They’d been growing more unruly with each passing hour, reaching toward Julian without permission, trying to slip through the window cracks. Twice, Cillian had been forced to drag them back into himself, and the effort left him shaking.
Mine, they whispered. Ours. Touch. Claim. Keep.
“Not yet.” Cillian’s voice fractured into harmonics. “We must be careful.”
But careful was becoming impossible when Julian sat there in his oversized cardigan, hair mussed from running his fingers through it, talking to the darkness as if it might talk back.
The beacon had felt him. Somehow, impossibly, Julian had sensed Cillian’s presence in the apartment the night before.
Most humans remained oblivious to shadow-walking, their minds refusing to acknowledge what they couldn’t understand.
But Julian had looked directly at the corner where Cillian had stood, watching him sleep.
And then this morning, Julian seemed to thank the shadows for keeping watch.
Cillian’s form flickered, nearly losing cohesion. The token he’d left pulsed in response, a fragment of his essence wrapped in Julian’s tissue paper, tucked in Julian’s drawer. The connection sang between them, a golden thread only Cillian could see.
His phone buzzed - actual technology, not manifested - and Cillian solidified just enough to check the screen - a message in the Order’s encrypted channel.
Thorn: Meeting tonight. Shadow House. Mandatory.
Cillian dismissed it. Thorn could lecture him later about duty and responsibility. Right now, nothing mattered except the human in the window who’d also just received a text message.
Julian stared at his phone, then typed something.
Deleted it. Typed again. His face did that thing - the slight tightening around his eyes that Cillian was learning meant he was calculating social acceptability rather than just being honest in his replies.
He sent the message, then immediately set the phone face down on the desk.
“Inadequate,” Julian muttered. “That was completely inadequate.”
Cillian leaned forward, shadows pooling beneath him. What had his beacon written? Who had dared to text him? The urge to manifest inside the apartment, to read over Julian’s shoulder, to eliminate anyone who caused that expression…
The phone buzzed again. Julian picked it up, read the response, and his shoulders dropped half an inch.
“Well,” Julian said to the empty room. “That could have been worse.”
It had gone badly, then. Someone had hurt his mate. Cillian’s shadows writhed, tasting the air for targets. He could find whoever had sent that message. He could visit them and make them understand that careless words toward Julian Purdy carried consequences.
No, Cillian told himself, not without cause.
But his hunger growled anyway, wanting violence, wanting blood, wanting to clear the world of anyone who made Julian’s shoulders slump.
Julian returned to his laptop and pulled up what looked like research documents. He’d been compiling information all day - about shadow entities, about guardians, about creatures like Cillian. The beacon was trying to understand what he’d witnessed in the alley.
Such a smart thing to do…methodical...perfect.
Cillian watched Julian work for another hour, documenting his observations in that focused way of his.
He saw how Julian cited and checked every source and how each hypothesis was clearly stated.
It was a search for factual information rather than opinions.
If Julian had been hunting monsters instead of cataloging them, he would have been devastatingly efficient.
The thought sent heat through Cillian’s manifested form as he imagined it - his beacon, covered in gore, calmly explaining the most effective way to dispose of remains. Julian had looked at corruption being consumed and seen efficiency.
The shadows purred.
Movement below caught Cillian’s attention. A woman emerged from the apartment building, pulling her coat tight against the cold. She walked three blocks to a bus stop, checked her phone, and waited.
Cillian didn’t care about her. But then her phone buzzed, and she glanced at the screen and laughed, actually laughed, before typing a response.
She made the interaction look easy. Effortless.
The kind of casual social interaction that Julian carefully calculated and apparently still somehow got wrong.
The protective rage bubbled hotter. That woman probably had dozens of friends.
It was unlikely that she’d ever been suspended from work for being “too honest.” She had probably never spent her evenings alone, talking to shadows, because the darkness was better company than humans who found her intensity uncomfortable.
Julian deserved better. He deserved people who appreciated his precise mind and unflinching observations.
He deserved a world that didn’t punish him for refusing to lie.
More importantly, at least from Cillian’s perspective, Julian deserved a mate who would burn that world down if it kept hurting him.
I am that mate.
Cillian’s form flickered again, shadows spreading across the rooftop like spilled ink.
His hold over his shadows was slipping, and he knew he needed to feed.
It would be a way to channel his consuming energy into something productive before he manifested in Julian’s apartment and terrified his beacon by being too much, too soon.
But the thought of leaving, even temporarily, felt like tearing out his essence, and Cillian just couldn’t do it.
The lamp in Julian’s apartment created a warm circle of light. Julian sat within it, utterly alone, completely unaware that he was the most precious thing Cillian had encountered in all his centuries of existence.
They don’t deserve him, Cillian thought, watching Julian rub his eyes beneath his glasses. None of them deserves him.
Another text arrived on Julian’s phone. This time, Julian read it and didn’t respond at all. He just set the phone down and returned to his research.
Cillian hated that Julian did that - not because of Julian but for whoever was texting him.
Julian’s actions showed a dismissal born from experience, from knowing that responding would likely make matters worse.
How many messages had Julian received that made him give up on replying?
How many times had he been made to feel like his honesty was a flaw instead of a gift?
The shadows surged forward, crashing against Cillian’s control.
They wanted to pour through that window, to wrap around Julian and announce their presence.
They needed to make him understand that he would never be alone again, never be dismissed again, never be punished for being exactly what he was…
“No.” Cillian forced the word through clenched teeth that weren’t quite teeth. “Not. Yet.”
The shadows retreated, but they were sulking again. It was becoming a habit. They coiled around him like petulant serpents, radiating their frustration.
Cillian understood. He felt it too - his desperate, clawing need to claim, protect, and keep his mate.
But Julian was human, and that meant he was fragile.
He’d been calm in the alley because he hadn’t fully processed what he’d seen.
If Cillian manifested now, if he let the shadows run wild, Julian might finally feel the fear that had been notably absent.
And that would destroy something in Cillian that he hadn’t known existed until thirty-six hours ago.
So, he waited and watched, because for now that was all he could do. He let the golden thread between them hum with unspoken promises.
Julian closed his laptop around eight o’clock and made himself dinner - chicken breast, roasted vegetables, arranged in neat portions. He ate methodically, chewing each bite thoroughly, and Cillian found himself matching his breathing to Julian’s without conscious thought.
After dinner, Julian washed his dishes immediately, dried them, and put them away. Then he stood in his small kitchen, looking around like he was searching for the next task.
“This is why people drink,” Julian said to the empty apartment. “Unstructured time is terrible.”
Cillian’s chest ached. His beacon, suspended from work, was alone in his apartment with nothing but research and shadows for company. It was unacceptable.
The urge to hunt rose again, sharp and demanding. Cillian could find the supervisor who’d suspended Julian. He could explain very clearly how being correct was exactly the same as being right, and anyone who couldn’t understand that distinction didn’t deserve to supervise a mind like Julian’s.
But that would frighten Julian and might even make him see Cillian as a threat instead of a guardian.
So, Cillian stayed crouched on his rooftop, watching Julian retrieve a book from the shelf and settle into his chair. The beacon read for an hour, occasionally pausing to write notes in the margin. Even his handwriting was precise - small, neat letters that maximized space.
The shadows kept trying to slip away, kept reaching toward the window. Cillian caught them each time, but the effort was exhausting. They’d never been this rebellious before, never this insistent.
Because they’d never found their other half before.
Cillian’s phone buzzed again.
Thorn: Where are you? Meeting started ten minutes ago.
Cillian typed back: Unavoidably detained.
Thorn: By what?
By a human with gray eyes and no social filter who’d calmly suggested body disposal methods and then walked away like encountering eldritch entities was a normal Tuesday evening.
By a beacon who collected research like other people collected stamps.
By the mate Cillian had waited centuries to find without knowing he was waiting.
Cillian: Something important.
He put the phone away and returned his attention to Julian, who’d fallen asleep in his chair, book open on his lap. The reading glasses had slipped down his nose, and his head rested against the chair at an angle that would definitely cause neck pain.
Cillian stood. The shadows moved with him, eager to the point of desperation.
“Just to move him to the bed,” Cillian whispered. “Nothing more.”
The shadows didn’t believe him. Cillian didn’t believe himself.
But Julian would wake with a terrible crick in his neck if he stayed in that chair, and Cillian couldn’t bear the thought of his beacon in pain when he could prevent it.
With his decision made, Cillian stepped off the rooftop and let the darkness carry him across the street, through the window crack, and into Julian’s home.
His beacon slept on, peacefully unaware, while Cillian’s shadows finally - finally - wrapped around him like a promise and moved him silently to the bed.