The Elderwood was cloaked in night.

Mist laced low between the trees, curling in tendrils around Lyra’s boots as she stepped carefully over gnarled roots and uneven stones. Moonlight barely touched the forest floor here, filtered through a choking canopy of ancient branches and leaves that whispered secrets too old to understand.

She wasn’t alone.

Kaja padded beside her in silence, ears alert, body tense, as if the forest itself pressed too close. Lyra kept one hand near her satchel and the other rested lightly on the plumehound’s shoulder whenever they stopped. Her breath was slow and measured, but she moved with purpose—as if she were looking for something.

Or someone.

A strange howl cut through the hush, thin and reedy, distant but wrong. Lyra froze mid-step. The sound wasn’t muunjin. Not anything she could name. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled.

She scanned the trees. The woods fell silent again, unnaturally so.

She moved on.

The grass rustled to her left. Kaja’s head snapped in that direction, ears flat and body lowered. A chill raced down Lyra’s spine, and she wrapped her arms around herself. The air had grown colder.

Still, she pressed forward.

There was a pressure now. A presence. Something unseen, watching.

Lyra stopped, glancing behind her, then into the trees ahead. “Hello?” she called, voice strong despite the tremor in her chest. “Is someone there?”

Silence.

Then—a soft crunch to her right.

She turned sharply. Nothing.

“Young man…” she said, a little louder this time, stepping into a faint clearing where the haze thickened, swirling around her legs like fingers. “I’ve come to help you.”

Kaja’s growl was instant—low, guttural, dangerous.

“Kaja?” Lyra reached out, but the plumehound's hackles had risen. Her growl deepened into a bark, short and sharp. Alarmed, Lyra took a step back. “Okay, okay. We’re leaving.”

She turned.

Kaja lunged forward, snarling now, barking with fury into the blackness between the trees.

Then something moved.

A shape exploded from the trees with a feral snarl — massive, furred, eyes burning yellow through the haze, teeth and claws flashing toward her.

Lyra screamed—

—and bolted upright in bed, gasping for breath.

Sweat clung to her skin. Her sleep shirt was soaked, plastered to her back and chest. The glass ceiling of the conservatory glowed dimly with starlight, but the dark pressed close, wrapping the room in a hush broken only by her heaving breaths.

Something grabbed her arm.

She flinched, a choked gasp escaping her lips.

“Hey—hey, it’s okay, baby. I’m here,” came Hassian’s voice, rough with sleep and thick with concern. His arms wrapped around her instantly, pulling her to him.

Lyra collapsed against his chest. He cradled her close, one hand diving into her hair, the other locking around her waist like a vice.

“You’re okay,” he murmured into her hair. “I’ve got you.”

His lips brushed her temple, then her forehead, then her hairline. Over and over, grounding her.

She shook in his arms, her breath catching with aftershocks.

“Baby, you’re soaking wet.”

“I’m okay,” she whispered, arms looping weakly around his neck. “Just another…” Her voice trailed off.

“Nightmare,” he finished for her gently.

She nodded against him, still pressed to his chest. “Kaja was barking,” she murmured. “But that’s all I remember.”

Hassian didn’t let go. He rocked her slowly, thumb brushing up and down her back.

“I was hoping these dreams would stop now,” he said, a quiet ache in his voice.

“I don’t think this one was about old witches that look like puppets,” she said, attempting a smile.

He huffed a soft laugh, the kind that came from under his breath. “Okay,” he said, voice tender again. “Let’s get you out of this damp shirt.”

He helped her lift the soaked fabric over her head, tossing it aside without ceremony. The night air brushed her bare skin and she shivered. Instantly, Hassian lay back, tugging her with him beneath the blanket. His arms coiled around her tightly as he pulled the covers high.

“I’ve got you,” he said again, firmer this time. “Nothing’s getting to you without going through me first.”

“I know,” she whispered, the tension in her body finally starting to release. She smiled faintly against his skin. “My big, strong hunter.”

He held her tighter.

“Sleep,” he said softly. “We’ve got a big day tomorrow. I’m here. And I’m not going anywhere.”

There was a pause. Then, low and sure:

“I love you.”

Lyra’s eyes fluttered shut, the sound of his heartbeat steadying her.

“You sleep too,” she murmured. “And I love you too.”

Through the Rabbit Hole

Hassian didn’t sleep.

He held her while her breathing slowed, her muscles softened, and the tension bled from her frame. But sleep didn’t come for him.

His arms stayed locked around her—one hand cradling the back of her head, the other resting flat over her heart. Sometimes he needed that. Just to feel it beat. Just to remind himself she was still here. Still with him.

But the nightmares were getting worse.

Not every night. Not yet. But more than before. More than he could ignore.

In the beginning, she hadn’t dreamed at all. Or if she had, they weren’t like this—violent, disorienting things that tore her from sleep gasping and shaking, as if chased from the inside out.

She always said she didn’t remember them.

Maybe that was true.

But sometimes… he wasn’t so sure. Sometimes it felt like she did remember—just didn’t want him to know.

She’d told him from the start that she didn’t want to remember the life she left behind. Her human life. And he’d respected that. Never pushed. Never asked. Because if she wanted the past buried, he’d help her dig the grave and plant flowers over it — and stand guard so it never clawed its way back out.

But tonight, with the shadows stretching long and the air too still to ignore, his thoughts strayed.

What kind of life had she lived before?

Did she have a family? Parents? Siblings?

A husband?

The thought hit harder than he expected. Some nameless man, long dead from another time, who might’ve once held her like this. Kissed her like this. Whispered things that Hassian now said with trembling hands and reverent lips. Had she loved before?

Had someone else ever heard her laugh and thought, this is what forever sounds like?

Did she lose them? Did they die together? Or worse… had she died alone?

The image sliced him open.

Had she watched her world fall apart—knowing it was coming and unable to stop it? Had she faced the end with fear in her chest, her name already forgotten by the stars?

Had she been a mother?

That one crushed him.

If she’d once carried a child… loved them… lost them… the grief she must carry—grief she didn’t even remember—would be enough to drown a lesser soul. Was that what her dreams tried to echo? Pain too old for words?

He pressed a kiss to her hair, fierce and unyielding.

He didn’t know how to fight memories. He didn’t know how to slay ghosts. But if he could, he would tear them all down—brick by memory-wrapped brick—until she could rest.

Because she didn’t deserve to suffer for a life she couldn’t even remember.

And because she was his.

Not just in the way she curled against him in the night, or the way her fingers tightened when she was afraid.

Not just in the whispered promises. The pin she wore. The almost-vows they hadn’t yet spoken.

She was his in every way that mattered.

And he? He’d claimed her. Not with force, but with patience. With devotion. With the steady, relentless kind of love that said, I will be your shelter until you no longer need one. And even then—I’ll stay.

Whoever she was before… whatever pieces of herself she left behind…

They didn’t get her back.

Not the ghosts. Not the pain

. Not some nameless past lover.

Not even the world that died.

Because she’d chosen him.

And so long as she stayed—so long as she kept saying yours—he’d keep saying it back.

Mine.

She was here now. Alive. Warm. Breathing. With him.

And if the past tried to claw her back?

He’d claw deeper.

“I don’t care who you were,” he whispered to the dark, the words curling low and sharp in his chest. “She’s mine now. And I’ll fight ghosts, and galaxies to keep her.”

He pressed her tighter against him.

Because the past couldn’t have her.

Not now.

Not ever.

Through Breakfast

Dawn light spilled across the garden, softening the glass walls of the conservatory. Smoke curled lazily from the grill where Hassian stood, turning strips of trufflet in a pan.

Lyra shuffled out barefoot, hair sticking every which way, rubbing the last of sleep from her eyes. “You know,” she said, dropping into a chair, “normal people sleep in at least once a week.”

He shot her a look over his shoulder. “Normal people don’t have two plumehounds waiting for breakfast.”

She laughed under her breath. “Fair enough.”

He plated the food, setting one before her, then sat across with his own. They ate in quiet, the air crisp with morning dew, birds starting up in the trees. For a while it was easy, steady, ordinary. Until—
“You don’t remember anything at all from your life before, do you?”

The question hit harder than his tone meant it to. Lyra froze mid-bite, fork halfway to her mouth. Slowly, she set it down. “We’ve been over this.”

“I know,” he said, eyes steady on hers. “But the dreams… maybe they’re pieces of something real. Something from before.”

Her chest tightened. She tried to wave it off with a shrug. “Or maybe they’re just nightmares. Bad soup before bed. Doesn’t matter.”

“Lyra,” he pressed gently, but firm. “Don’t you wonder? Who you were? Who you loved?”

That made her flinch. “No. I don’t wonder. I don’t want to.”

“Not even about family? Parents? A—”

“Stop.” The word snapped out before she could soften it. She shoved her plate back a little too hard, the clatter loud in the morning hush. “You think I haven’t thought about that? You think I don’t know what I might’ve lost? But I don’t want to know. If I buried that life, let it stay buried.”

Silence stretched. Her chest rose and fell, tight with anger, with hurt.

Hassian set his food aside, standing. He came around the table and stopped in front of her. He didn’t touch her at first—just looked, his eyes steady, quiet as stone. “I only push because I care. Because the idea of you carrying that alone—without me—it tears me up.”

Her shoulders softened, just a fraction.

Finally, his hand brushed her cheek, thumb sweeping gently under her eye. His voice dropped low. “But if you say leave it, then I’ll leave it. Because I’d rather have you here angry at me, than lose you to shadows I can’t fight.”

Lyra exhaled shakily, tension bleeding from her frame. She pressed her forehead to his chest with a frustrated little huff. “You drive me insane sometimes.”

Hassian’s arms tightened around her, firm and steady. “I do it because I care,” he murmured, voice low. “Because I don’t want anything to touch you that I can stop.”

She let out a small, unsteady laugh, hands gripping his shirt. “You’re impossible.”

“I’m yours,” he said, pressing a gentle kiss to her temple. “No ghosts, no past… just me.”

Her lips curved against his chest. “Mine,” she whispered.