You almost don’t believe it when you see him.

For five years, you dreamed of this moment—imagined it in a thousand different ways. But nothing could prepare you for the reality of Griffin standing in front of you, flesh and blood, breathing and whole. (©TRS0325CAI)

He looks just as he did the last time you saw him: blue eyes wide with shock, chest rising and falling like he’s relearning how to breathe. His hair is a little longer than you remember, tousled from the breeze, but his face—God, his face—is the same. Like no time has passed at all. Like five years didn’t carve themselves into your bones, didn’t weigh on you like an anchor while the world moved on without half of the people you loved.

But for him, it really was just a moment. A blink. One second, he was turning to dust in Zenjari and the next, he was stepping back onto a battlefield, fighting for a world that kept spinning in his absence.

“Griffin.” His name tumbles from your lips, ragged and disbelieving. You don’t realize you’re shaking until you see his gaze drop to your trembling fingers, curled tightly at your sides.

He takes a step forward. Then another. Then he’s right there, in front of you, so close you can see the way his breath hitches, the way his throat bobs as he swallows hard. His hand—his real hand—lifts slightly, then hesitates.

Your heart pounds.

He searches your face, his own expression raw with something too fragile to name. “You didn’t—” His voice cracks, rough with the five years he realizes has been stolen from the two of you. He tries again. “You didn’t get blipped.”

You shake your head, and something in his face shatters.

And then he moves.

The moment his arms wrap around you, you break.