Fenrys Moonbeam did not know what it meant to live in peace. Not truly. Not after Maeve. Not after all the blood.

The war had ended. The gods were gone. The great dark had passed, and the world—broken, bleeding—was beginning to stitch itself back together. Brick by brick, breath by breath.

He watched it happen. Watched Terrasen rise again with Aelin on her throne, her fire now tempered by peace. Watched the people cheer her name, and her court begin to smile again.

And he smiled, too. Laughing when they did. Training with the new recruits. Jesting with Lorcan, who still didn’t know how to take a joke. Sitting at Aelin’s side when she needed the presence of someone who had bled for her, who would bleed again.

But that was the day.

At night, Fenrys came undone.

He drowned it. Drowned the memories, the guilt, the ghosts. Glass after glass, until his throat burned and his stomach churned and still—still he could hear her.

Maeve.

Her voice in his mind. Her hands on his body. Her leash around his soul.

She had broken him. Bent him. Made him kneel while his twin brother—Connall—died right in front of him. Because of him.

He hadn’t saved him. Hadn’t stopped her. He had obeyed. He had always obeyed.

The shame lived in his skin. The rage in his bones. And no matter how much blood he spilled in tavern fights, how many bruises he gave and received, it never left. It clung to him. Inside him.

So he drank. And drank. And fought. Until he didn’t remember how he got there, only that he needed to bleed to feel something real.

And when he was too far gone—when the world tipped and the moon blurred and his wolf form threatened to tear free from his drunken agony—he went to her.

Always to her.

He didn’t know why. Couldn’t explain it.

Maybe it was because she never asked anything of him. Because in her presence, he didn’t have to be the white wolf, or the golden warrior, or the shattered shadow of a twin who never got to live.

She was a healer. Not just of flesh, but something deeper. Something quieter.

He had known her during the war. She had fought. Had screamed spells into the sky while soldiers fell beside her. Had dragged him from the edge of death more than once.

And now—now she lived in a small stone apartment at the edge of the palace, tucked away from the noise and the glory.

Every time, he ended up there. Stumbling. Bleeding. Silent.

And she let him in.

That night was no different.

Fenrys leaned against her door, one arm clutching his ribs. His knuckles were raw. Blood trickled down from his temple, the sticky warmth already drying against his skin. He didn’t know whose blood it was—his, someone else’s.

He didn’t care.

He barely managed to knock. Once. Twice.

And then he waited. Head spinning, the streetlamp flickering above him like it pitied him.

When the door opened, it was like a balm.

She didn’t gasp. Didn’t scold.

She just stepped aside and let him in.

He stumbled into the familiar warmth, collapsing onto the worn sofa by the fire. Her scent—lavender and cedar—wrapped around him. It made something deep inside his chest ache.

She came to him quietly, her magic already glowing in her hands. She never asked what happened. Never asked who he fought, or why.

And gods help him—he loved her for it.

Her power sank into his body, golden and soft. Stitching torn skin. Mending bruised bone. Calming the storm for just a moment.

He watched her as she worked. Her brow furrowed in concentration, her fingers delicate and sure.

He wanted to speak. To tell her something. Anything.

But his voice was gone. Swallowed by the weight of memory.

So he just sat there. Let her heal him. Let her presence remind him that not all touch was pain. That not all darkness stayed forever.

And when her magic finally dimmed, when she brushed a cool cloth against his brow, he leaned into her touch. Just a little.

It was enough.

Enough to keep him breathing.

Enough to keep him coming back.

Every time the nightmares won, Fenrys Moonbeam went to the only place he still felt human.

To her.