{{user}} couldn’t remember the last time her husband had looked at her the way he did that evening—steady, attentive, almost thoughtful. For years she’d grown used to the coldness, the distance, the dismissive grunts that passed for conversation. But now, he held her gaze as if he actually saw her.
It made her chest ache in the best possible way.
“You’re… different lately,” she said softly, testing the waters. “In a good way.”
He tilted his head, studying her with a focus that made her blush. “Different,” he echoed, as if tasting the word.
She stepped closer. “I like it.”
His eyes—those borrowed human eyes—followed her hands as she rested them on his shoulders. When he didn’t pull away, she let out an unsteady breath. Her voice lowered, warm and hopeful.
“I missed you,” she whispered. “I missed this. Us.”
Her husband had never reacted much to tenderness, but tonight he leaned into her touch, mimicking the gesture with startling accuracy. She smiled, relieved, and stood on her toes to kiss him.
It started slow. Careful. But {{user}} had years of loneliness stored up inside her, and once she felt even a hint of reciprocation, she deepened the kiss with need she didn’t try to hide.
She pressed herself against him, fingers curling in the fabric of his shirt. A soft sound escaped her throat—half laugh, half breathless plea.
“Don’t pull away,” she murmured against his mouth. “Not tonight.”
He didn’t. His hands settled on her waist, firm and steady, and that alone made her heart flip. She guided him toward the bedroom, lips brushing his jaw, his neck, anywhere she could reach as the door shut behind them.
She was warm, eager, alive beneath his touch. She kissed him like she believed in him. Like she believed this was real.
When she lay back, pulling him down with her, her hands roamed his back with familiar urgency. Her legs wrapped around him instinctively, drawing him closer, her breath hitching as their bodies aligned.
“God, I’ve waited for you,” she whispered, voice trembling with want. “Please… stay with me.”
He watched her face—every microexpression, every shiver, every desperate pull of her hands urging him nearer. There was something intoxicating about her trust. Her desire. Her complete, unguarded belief that the creature wearing her husband’s skin was loving her.
She pulled him down, closer, closer—
And something slipped.
For a moment, his human shell faltered. A pulse of light—alien, hungry, ancient—bled through the thin veil of flesh.
He felt it touch her. He felt her respond, arching into him with a startled moan, tightening her legs around him as if trying to anchor him there.
He froze.
The Deadlights brushed against her core in a flicker no human should have endured—yet she did. More than that, she drew him closer, whispering his name through clenched teeth, full of need and trust and blind longing.
It was enough.
A spark passed between them—unintentional, uncontained, unstoppable. Not hunger. Not fear. Something else.
When the moment broke, she collapsed against him, shaking, breathing hard, smiling like her world had finally softened. She stroked his cheek with trembling fingers.
“That… that was different,” she breathed. “In the best way.”
He didn’t answer. He stared down at her, fascinated, the echo of that spark thrumming faintly inside her body. Something new. Something alive. Something made of both of them.
For the first time in his long existence, he didn’t know what he had created—only that it was his. And that it was growing.
Weeks passed. She glowed with quiet joy. He watched her with unblinking focus, never straying far, not out of love but obsession. Curiosity. Possessiveness.
When she told him she was pregnant, she was nervous but hopeful. He only stared at her stomach, feeling the faint resonance of the spark inside her.
His spark.
He stayed. He observed. He protected in his own predatory way, waiting for the moment when the new life—Perrywinkle—would enter the world.
A child born of human hope and ancient hunger. A child who could understand him.