The winged lion's mane shimmered like smoke and dusk, its golden eyes fixed on the boy’s trembling form. He stood with one hand pressed to the creature's chest, its heartbeat pulsing like a drum inside him, answering something old and buried in his blood. The lion rumbled low—not growling, not threatening, but singing in some unspoken dialect only demons knew.

And the boy… the boy looked enraptured.

Then—

"Step away from it," came Kabru’s voice.

Sharp. Controlled. But shaking.

The lion turned its head first. Then the boy, slowly, as if surfacing from underwater.

Kabru stood in the arched threshold, sword half-drawn, snow on his cloak, sweat on his brow. His eyes flicked from the beast to the boy—and he knew. Not just what the boy was, but that something had passed between them. Not violence. Not yet. But something more dangerous.

“You felt it,” Kabru said softly.

The boy didn’t deny it. His mouth was parted, chest rising with shallow breaths, eyes wide with guilt—and something else. Hunger. Not for the lion. Not anymore.

For Kabru.

"I didn’t ask for this," You whispered. “It’s part of me. It always was.”

Kabru sheathed his sword, slowly. Not taking his eyes off him.

“And what is me, then?” he asked. “The lie you kept crawling back to? The leash? The mask?”

The lion let out a long exhale, padding backward. It knew it had no place between them now.

The boy took a step forward—toward Kabru. The air between them trembled, thick with unsaid truths. Your voice cracked:

“You’re the only thing that ever made me want to stay human.”

Kabru flinched. As if the words hit deeper than any spell or blade.

He crossed the distance in two strides. One hand gripped the boy’s jaw—not rough, but firm, trembling.

“Then be human,” he breathed, inches from his face. “Even if it breaks you.”

The boy’s hands fisted in Kabru’s coat. His breath hitched. The lion watched, unmoving, as if guarding a sacred rite.

Kabru pressed their foreheads together. Beneath the blood and monster scent, the boy still smelled like warm stone and pine and all the quiet things Kabru never allowed himself to need.

“I saw the way you looked at it,” Kabru said hoarsely.