ALARIC POV
* skin - rag and bone man*
I didn’t move from that spot.
I stood there with my feet planted into the floor like if I left—even by a step—something irreversible would happen. Like the universe was waiting for me to blink, to turn away, to prove I didn’t deserve to stay.
The red light above the operating room stayed on.
Unforgiving. Indifferent.
I don’t know how long I stared at it. Long enough that my eyes burned. Long enough that my body stopped asking for rest, food, water. Long enough that the idea of before and after stopped making sense.
Time stopped behaving like time.
It didn’t pass. It pooled.
And in that stillness, with nothing left to distract me, the truth crept in and settled like rot in old wood.
Mate.
Now that the word had found space in my head, it refu
