06/03/2026 16:42

---

She started screaming. Then he'd held my hand, and I'd struggled to keep up, to understand. Not really. I thought that was just because I was new.

It was as if saying his name opened the floodgates. I screamed for him, because Nicholas would never scream. There was something almost ghostlike about that shining bit of flesh, like, if I blinked, it would vanish into the October night. But he stayed that near painful inch away, letting only scent and the furred glide of hair reach us.