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“Orion.” Benjamin's voice is little more than a puff of air against my throat.

I lift my head to gaze at him. Dust and blood coat his face, yet even with death bearing down upon us, his eyes find mine with absolute clarity.

“I'm sorry,” he whispers, tears carving clean paths through the dirt on his cheeks. “I never should've left.”

A quiet rumble escapes my chest. “I found you.”

His lips tremble into the saddest smile I have ever seen. “You did.”

Another vicious groan rolls through the mountain, and more stone settles across my back. Pain tears through every muscle I possess, but I refuse to shift beneath the weight.

Benjamin reaches up with shaking fingers and cups my face, his thumbs stroking tenderly beneath my eyes. “For someone who tried to make me eat my uncle, you might actually be the best thing that's ever happened to me.”

Despite everything, I huff softly. “Strange human.”

He leans forward then, his gaze never straying as his lips softly brush mine.

The touch is featherlight. Nothing like the desperate hunger that had consumed us in the den, but somehow more significant than anything we have ever done.

I close my eyes and savor it, memorizing the warmth of his mouth as though I might carry it with me into whatever comes next.

“I love you,” he murmurs against my lips. “I don't know how, but… it feels like my soul has loved you since forever. I shouldn't have been scared of it.”

Those words unlock more memories inside my mind. Bright laughter, sunbathing, and swimming in the river under the stars. A gentle, smiling face and fingers combing my damp fur.

I love you.

Nobody has spoken this to me in such a very long time. Not since I was a cub. Not since Mother.

Foreign emotion lodges painfully in my throat. I have no language for what swells inside my chest, no words that could accurately portray the warmth coursing through my veins. A purr rumbles deep from within as I brush my nose with his. “I love⁠—”

Another slab of granite crashes onto my back with enough force to drive me into the earth beneath us. Agony explodes through every muscle, and the air tears from my lungs in a strangled grunt. Benjamin cries out when I instinctively tighten my hold around him, refusing to let even a pebble strike his body.

Stone shifts overhead with a deafening groan, the weight pressing down harder and harder until my arms begin to tremble fiercely.

“Orion! Stay with me.”

I force my eyes open, desperate to memorize him while I still can. His curls are tangled, tears glistening against soot-covered skin, and yet he is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen. A small, pained smile forms on my lips. “I love⁠—”

The words never leave my tongue.

Just before the crushing weight becomes too much to bear, something rips me away so suddenly that Benjamin slips from my grasp.

“No!” I scrabble for my human desperately, terror ripping through my chest.

An arm catches Benjamin before he can disappear beneath the collapsing rock and hauls him to safety. My gaze flies to the enormous shadow looming above, and one single golden eye reflects at me in the dark.

Father.

He says nothing, only tosses Benjamin toward me before planting both hands against the crumbling stone.

The mountain shudders. Muscle strains beneath black fur as Father braces himself beneath thousands upon thousands of pounds of falling rock. His claws dig deep, holding back the collapse just long enough for the passage beyond us to remain open.

“Go,” he growls.

I can only stare at him in shock, searching his face for something I know I will not find. His gaze flicks toward Benjamin quickly, lingering where my mate protects the life growing inside him, and understanding dawns inside of me.

He does not suddenly regret the blood spilled between us. Nor has the mountain falling around our heads transformed him into the creature Mother once wished he could become.