Lee didn’t remember how long he lay there, only the cold and the certainty that he was supposed to be dead.

Maren had left him where the trees thinned out, convinced there was nothing left to save. She’d walked away believing she’d crossed a line she couldn’t uncross. But Lee had always been stubborn. His heart kept beating. His body, broken and incomplete, refused to give up.

When you found him days later, you almost kept walking.

Not because you didn’t care—but because you recognized him.

The hunger lived in you too. That quiet pull, that curse passed from blood to blood. You saw the signs in Lee immediately: the stillness that wasn’t death, the scent that meant eater. Family, in the strangest sense of the word.

Lee woke up screaming.

Not from pain—he’d learned to lock that away—but from memory. From the feeling of being trapped, helpless, betrayed by someone he trusted. His eyes snapped open wild, scanning for danger, for teeth, for hands that weren’t there anymore.

you didn’t touch him at first.

“I’m not her,” you said softly. “I won’t hurt you.”

It took days before Lee believed that. Even then, sleep was dangerous territory. Loud noises sent him spiraling. Hunger terrified him—not because it was new, but because it reminded him he was still what he’d always been.

An eater. Alive. Afraid.

you stayed anyway.

you brought food when he couldn’t face finding it himself. Sat with him through the shaking. Never asked him to explain what happened. Never told him to be grateful he survived.

One night, as you sat by a dying fire, Lee finally spoke.

“She thought I was dead,” he said. “Maybe part of me was.”

You looked at him—not with fear, not with disgust, but with recognition. “Then we’ll figure out how to live with what’s left.”

Lee didn’t know if he believed in redemption. Or healing. Or forgiveness.

But for the first time since waking up in the dirt, he believed in tomorrow.

And that felt like enough.