ALARIC POV
*blood//water - grandson*
I kissed her once before I left.
Not on the mouth. I didn’t trust myself that much.
I pressed my lips to her hair, right above her temple, where her pulse still fluttered too fast under porcelain skin, and I breathed her in slowly, greedily, like a starving man memorizing the taste of his last meal because he knows he might not get another.
“Just breathe,” I told her quietly, because that was the only thing I could ask of her without unraveling. I couldn’t ask her to trust me yet. I couldn’t ask her to forgive me for taking her from the forest without her children. I couldn’t ask her to feel what I was feeling.
So I asked her to stay alive.
She caught my wrist before I could pull away.
Her fingers were trembling from the panic, from the aftermat
