But love had not arrived when I learned his name.
I did not know whether that absence was crueler to him or to me.
Then the dreams began.
The first was terror.
Steel screaming against steel.
Darkness collapsing inward.
A small green light retreating.
The world compressing until there was no room for breath.
I understood pieces of it now.
Aaron’s lamp.
The sound of his tool striking the van’s roof.
The wreck shifting while the rescue crew tried to reach me.
Meeting Elias had changed the nightmare.
It had not ended it.
The thing outside the crushed van was no longer faceless. A frightened man had been holding the wheel. Another man hadclimbed down a ravine, knocked on the wreckage, and promised to return.
The darkness still waited for me.
But people existed inside it now.
The second dream was not frightening.
For days, I believed it might be a room.
Warmth without visible fire.
Wood beneath my hand.
Pressure at the base of my neck.
Three notes carrying through fog.
There was no fear.
Only an ache so deep it felt older than language.
Every time the sound came, my chest tightened as if I had been waiting for it.
Then Reid whistled.
Two short notes.
One long.
My entire body turned toward him before thought caught up.
