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He stayed hidden, watching, torn between loyalty and the fear that he was too late, but knowing in his bones that he couldn’t break exile. Not and be allowed to exist.

Chapter Eighteen

Carson

“I choose to stay.” Carson’s voice was hoarse, raw from the feeding and the brink of death, but it carried steel. He clung to Mathias, fingers digging into cool shoulders as his strength slowly returned.

He had been given every warning. The slow loss of self. The ritual’s failure rate. The sun’s accelerating claim on the man he loved. Carson carried those truths like stones in his chest. They had not changed his answer. If anything, knowing the full shape of the ruin had only made the decision cleaner.

“But no turning. I won’t become another whelp or risk the ritual’s failure. We do this symbiotically—the third option you’ve only spoken of briefly. We share blood and bond, life for life, without me losing what’s left of my humanity. Or you losing yours to the sun.”

Mathias stilled, heart thudding hard against Carson’s chest in borrowed rhythm. “You understand the risks? The legends speak of such pairings, but bloodlines have diluted over millennia. There’s no centralized king who can guide us, and no ancient laws protecting what we build. Just us against the fractures.”

“I know,” Carson breathed, tilting his head to brush his lips along Mathias’ jaw. “But I’m done running from the ruin. I want the high on our terms.”

Mathias’ groan landed against Carson’s hair. There was surrender and defiance in the same sound. Then the warehouse was gone and the night was motion.

Carson’s body would not have made the walk. He knew that much. He was held securely by cool arms, a chest with no beat, with the city sliding past in pieces. He rested as a brick wall was followed by a river smell, and the lurch of speed that wasn’t a car. He kept his face turned into Mathias’ throat because the bond was still singing and the other thing, that bitter draught of Gina’s poison, and the camp watching them leave, was still in his mouth.

He didn’t see Gina. He didn’t see Rolf. He felt them drop away behind the gold like rooms with the lights kicked out. Whelps. Fractures. There was a memory of a roof that had stopped being safe the minute Carson’s blood went wrong on its floor.

“Where—” He didn’t finish it. Talking hurt.

“Away,” Mathias said, and the word was enough.

Dawn started to pale the edge of the world. Carson felt Mathias tighten around him, felt the sun lean on a body that was not his, and fear cut through the haze—not for himself, but for the man carrying him.

They stopped in woods he did not know. Pine. Wet earth. A cabin that looked like it had been waiting for someone worse than them. It had thick walls, effective shutters that were already closed, and a door Mathias kicked shut with his heel.

Cellar air hit Carson’s face, cool and windowless. Mathias went down the stairs without putting him down, and the last thing Carson saw before the dark closed was Mathias’ mouth set against morning, stubborn, still here.

A forgotten hunter’s hole. Years cold. Safe enough for a jealous dawn.

Carson’s fingers found Mathias’ shirt and stayed there, because fleeing the city had not fixed the fracture. It had only put walls around it.

***

Mathias

The fire had burned down to a low red glow. Carson lay half across his torso, skin still warm from the earlier exchange of blood, fingers absently tracing the line of Mathias’ collarbone. For a long while neither of them spoke. The only sounds were the wind in the pines and the slow, borrowed beat of Mathias’ heart.

Then Carson asked, quiet and almost casual, “Did you ever see your sire again? After you were turned?”

Mathias’ hand stilled in Carson’s hair. The question was simple, curious, without weight. That made it land harder.

“No,” he answered after a moment. “He was gone by the time I understood what I had become. Some sires stay. Most don’t. Mine left me with the hunger and the knowledge that the sun would one day Call me home, and nothing else.”

Carson was quiet for a few breaths. Then, still in that same soft, wondering tone: “How did you learn to move through the world? Like...ordinary things. Jobs. Papers. People noticing you don’t age.”

Mathias stared up at the dark ceiling beams. “Carefully. You learn to disappear before anyone looks too closely. You change names. You move every decade or so. You watch the way humans invent new ways to track each other and you stay ahead of them. It becomes second nature—until you realize you’ve spent more years erasing yourself than living.”

Another pause. Carson’s fingers resumed their slow path across his skin.

“How do you know a place is safe to stay? To roost, I guess.”

Mathias almost smiled at the word, but the expression never fully formed. “You feel it. Or you don’t. Thick walls. No direct sun. A way to lock the young ones in when the light comes. And distance—from hunters, from other camps, from anyone who might remember your face from another life.” He was silent for a long moment. “I used to be good at finding those places. I used to be good at wanting them.”

Carson lifted his head slightly, studying him in the firelight. The questions kept coming, gentle and unhurried, the way someone might ask about a distant country they had never seen.