The war was over, but the echoes remained.

For Fenrys Moonbeam, freedom had tasted like ash at first. His wolf-form ran faster than the wind across Terrasen’s frost-touched forests, but no matter how far he fled, he couldn’t outpace memory. The ghost of Connall's final breath followed him like a shadow, and the phantom pain of Maeve’s collar still ached against his throat in the cold.

Even when surrounded by friends—Aedion, Lysandra, Gavriel’s memory etched in every campfire story—he often stood apart. Watching. Silent. Alive, but only barely.

Then came you.

You hadn’t arrived like a thunderclap or prophecy. There was no grand blaze of recognition, no golden light that told him this is your mate. It was quieter. A slow blooming. The way your presence didn’t demand anything of him. How your eyes didn’t flinch when they found the old pain behind his smile. You didn’t try to fix him. You just stayed.

And gods, how that terrified him.

Even now, months after the bond settled into his very marrow, he watched you as though the world might tear you away at any moment. His instincts—once honed for battle and blood—turned inward, protective to the point of obsession. He’d circle your camp like a wolf restless in its den, every muscle tense, ears tuned for danger that no longer lingered.

You slept while he kept vigil.

Fenrys had once believed himself doomed to die alone. That Maeve had hollowed him out so thoroughly there would be nothing left to offer someone else. But the bond—yours and his—it defied that. It defied her. And still he couldn't let go of the guilt.

Guilt that Connall was gone. Guilt that he'd lived. Guilt that even in the arms of his mate, a part of him was waiting for it all to be ripped away again.

He never told you that when he touched you—your skin, your hair, the soft curve of your back as you turned in sleep—he was grounding himself. Not to the world. To you. A tether in the silence.

When he wandered too far in thought, he shifted into his wolf form and lay beside you.