Chapter 39
HOLD ON, SNOWDROP
Andrik-
The walk home should feel lighter, but it doesn’t.
Lumi walks a few steps ahead of me, her fingers trailing along the frost-tipped branches like she’s saying goodbye to each one.
Bimby button glows softly from her perch in Lumi’s hair, and Nixie’s warning still sits heavy in my chest like a stone I can’t cough up.
It’s not the raven’s omen that’s unraveling me.
It’s her.
Her scent has changed again. Subtly at first—so faint I thought I imagined it.
Every breath I take feels like I’m drowning in it.
It’s thick and saccharine, coating my tongue until I can almost taste her on the air.
My fangs ache—a dull, thrumming pressure in my gums that’s nearly unbearable.
A hunger that has nothing to do with food.
Kes’thr?sh vreka nakashi. (This scent devours my soul.)
I have to rein it in and stay strong for her sake. The bond is pulling her into heat, and I’m already barely holding myself together.
I watch the way her hips sway slightly as she navigates the uneven terrain. The way she pauses to look back at me, smiling—Gods, that smile—like she trusts me completely.
All I can think about is pinning her against the nearest tree and making her mine.
Rhún. Vesh rh?n. (Breathe. Just breathe.)
“Andrik?” Her voice pulls me back. She’s stopped and turned toward me. “You okay? You’ve been really quiet.”
I force a nod. “Fine.”
She tilts her head, unconvinced. Her dark eyes search my face, and I have to look away before she sees too much—before she realizes I’m one heartbeat away from losing control entirely.
“You’ve said that twice now,” she says softly, stepping closer. “And I haven't believed you either time.”
Her scent hits me like a physical thing. My jaw tenses. Kal’shara vesh—threl nakresh mai. (Stubborn female—if you only knew your own good.)
“Lumi.” My voice comes out rougher than I intend. “We should keep moving.”
“Why?” She takes a step closer... then another. She’s close enough that I can see the flush creeping up her neck. She’s feeling it too—the pull—the heat.
“Because if we don’t—” I cut myself off, fists clenching at my sides.
“If we don’t, what?” Her hand reaches up, fingers brushing my jaw. That simple touch sends lightning straight through me.
Sul’vrek m?r—threll’kresh, threll’sul. (Desperately need to claim her—every part, every way.)
Mine.
Claim her.
Now.
I grab her wrist and pull her hand away. The look of surprise in her eyes feels like a stake through my heart. I may be ancient, but right now, I’m just a beast trying to keep his claws retracted so he doesn't shred the only thing that matters.
“Lumi, you need to—”
A flicker of movement in my peripheral vision stops me cold.
Something small and dark shifts between the trees like smoke given form.
I turn sharply, every instinct firing at once.
A shadow detaches itself from the trunk of a nearby birch, stepping into the winter light.
A Vair?nsae. (Soul fox.) But not just any Vair?nsae.
Saevel.
My breath catches.
His head tilts at the exact same angle as mine—the mirror image of a soul cursed to live a millennium of winters. When he breathes, I feel the expansion in my own lungs, as if the forest is breathing through us.
Lumi follows my gaze, her hand instinctively reaching for mine. “Andrik... what is that?”
How do I explain it to her?
Saevel’s fur shimmers like frost-kissed vapor, flickering between solid and spectral. His eyes—pale blue, ancient, and knowing—lock onto Lumi with an intensity that makes my chest ache.
This isn’t just another soboe?n coming to meet her. This is a piece of me.
He moves like liquid shadow, each step silent in the snow. His tail flickers behind him—part fox, part flame. He moves toward her like he’s being pulled into her orbit.
Lumi’s fingers tighten around mine. “Oh my God. It’s beautiful,” she whispers.
Beautiful doesn’t cover it. Saevel is a fragment of divinity wrapped in fur and mischief. A piece of my soul that the Gods tore free after they made me. I haven’t seen him in thousands of years.
But he’s here now—for her.
My throat closes.
She takes a tentative step forward, releasing my hand. I want to pull her back and keep her close, but this moment isn’t mine to control.
Saevel stops three feet from her, head tilted, eyes glowing like blue moonstone. He studies her the same way I do—like she’s a puzzle worth solving.
Then he does something I never even knew he was capable of—he speaks. A whisper in the back of my mind, in Vraks?n, old and cracked with disuse. “Ka’mai kaemorin.” (Finally mine.)
Not his. Ours.
Lumi gasps softly. “Andrik... this one feels different than the others. My heart feels tingly.”
Saevel lifts his head, and in one fluid motion, he steps forward and presses his forehead to Lumi’s chest, right over her heart.
The air shifts. The forest hums.
Pearl light erupts from where they touch, spiraling outward in delicate threads that weave through the trees like veins of starlight, the same light that bloomed with the Serynthil flowers, the same ancient magic that marked her ankle.
But this is different. This is us.
Lumi’s eyes go wide, her breath stuttering. “Andrik, what’s happening?”
I can’t answer. I can barely stand.
I feel it. Every emotion she’s feeling right now—wonder, confusion, warmth, safety; it floods through me like a river breaking through a dam.
I don’t only feel her through our mating bond, I feel her through Saevel. Through the piece of my soul that just chose her.
She’s not just bonded to him. She’s bonded to me. Deeper than before. Truer. Saevel pulls back slowly, his amber eyes glowing brighter. He circles her once, tail brushing against her legs, and then—because he’s nothing if not dramatic—he vanishes into the shadows between two trees.
Gone. But not really. I can still feel him. Hovering just out of sight, he’ll never truly leave her again.
She turns to me, her face flushed, eyes shining. “That was...”
“A Vair?nsae,” I rasp. “His name is Saevel. He’s... complicated.”
“Complicated how?”
I take a step toward her, and then another, until there's barely a breath between us. My hand lifts on its own, trembling, and cups her cheek.
“He’s a piece of my soul, Lumi. When the Gods made me, they split off a part of my essence that would guard my future mate. A creature that could walk where I couldn’t, see what I couldn’t, feel what I was too broken to feel.”
Her lips part. “He’s... you?”
“Part of me,” I correct softly. “The part that never stopped hoping.”
Tears well in her eyes, and it takes everything in me not to kiss them away.
“He chose you,” I whisper. “Which means there’s no going back for me. Not that there ever was. Without you, Saevel I just need to be fast enough to outrun the shadow I can feel at our heels.
The world sharpens immediately. Scents layer themselves in vivid detail—pine, frost, Lumi’s heat, and something else. Something wrong that I still can’t place.
I drop to all fours, massive and low to the ground. She stares at me wide-eyed, so I lower myself further, in a silent invitation.
She climbs onto my back without hesitation, her thighs gripping my sides, her hands tangling in the thick fur at my neck. The moment she settles, I feel her weight, her warmth, her trust. My tail coils around her waist like a safety vest.
“Hold on, snowdrop,” I try to say, but all that comes out is a low rumble from deep in my chest.
She understands. Her arms wrap tighter, and her body presses flush against mine. The forest blurs around us in a haze of colors. Trees whip past, snow kicks up in clouds beneath my paws, my breath tears from my lungs in ragged bursts.
Wrongness still clings to the air, no matter how hard I try to outrun it—or maybe it’s already ahead, waiting.
I can feel her heart pounding against my back, but she doesn’t make a sound. She just holds on and trusts me to get her home.
The cabin comes into view through the last patch of trees. I don’t stop until we’re at the door. Saevel is already waiting for us on the steps.
My body shifts back before I even fully register, bones crack and reshape, and suddenly I’m standing on two legs again, breathing hard with one hand braced against the doorframe. The other shoots back to catch Lumi before she falls.
“Andrik...” Her voice is soft, cautious. “What happened back there?”
I want to tell her. I want to explain the feeling of dread crawling under my skin, the way the forest went quiet in all the wrong ways. But I don’t have an answer.
“I don't know,” I admit, and the words taste like failure as they leave my lips. “But you’re safe now. Inside the wards, nothing can touch you.”
She searches my face, and I see the questions in her eyes—the worry.
But she doesn’t push.
Instead, she steps closer and wraps her arms around my waist, pressing her face into my chest as high as she can reach.
“Okay,” She whispers. “I trust you.”
Those three words break something loose inside me.
I wrap my arms around her and hold her there, breathing her in, trying to calm the storm raging in my chest.
She’s safe. She’s here. She’s mine.
For now, that has to be enough.
After a long moment, she pulls back and looks up at me with flushed cheeks and tangled hair.
“I think...” She pauses, biting her lip. “I think I need to cool off. Can I take a bath?”
“Cool off? It’s ten degrees, Lumi.”
A bath?
Right. Because we were seconds away from consummating the bond against a tree, and now her body is screaming for relief in a completely different way.
“It may be ten degrees, snow-boy, but I am melting.”
I nod stiffly, “Of course. I’ll get the water going for you.”
She smiles and heads toward the bathroom. Saevel scampers after her.
But I can’t shake the feeling that whatever was out in the forest...isn’t done yet.