I woke to Axel’s furrowed brow, his worried face hovering over me, threads of his fringe dipping over his brows. Brain still foggy, I noted it was a pleasant sight to come back to.

  “How’s it feeling?” he asked.

  Curious, I raised my right hand into view, no hint of any pain left at all. Squeezing it closed to test, I was astonished to find it was working perfectly. Both Tam and Wren had done their jobs well. Apart from the horrific scar that split my hand in two and the coloration difference, the stitches already surprisingly absent, it was like I had never lost three of my fingers at all. There was a tightness, a stiffness, as well as bone weariness, but that was par for the course with magical healing.

  A relief spiralled through me. It was nice to have my hand back. I hadn't realised how much anxiety it was causing me to have it missing.

  “Won’t be doing that again,” I muttered, but it croaked out of a dry throat. I frowned. “How long was I out?”

  Axel’s hands encompassed mine, his thumb running over the rigid scar down the center. It was then I realised why I was looking up at him. My head was in his lap. Trying my hardest to ignore the heat at the tips of my ears, I resisted the urge to spring up. I took a breath. Reminding myself that we slept together, so this was no big deal, did nothing to stymie the mortification.

  I'd been a client of his lap pillows before, but usually, I'd been dying.

  “Couple hours. We set up a few tents for catnaps.” Axel and I appeared to be inside one as well, the blue material above his blond hair fluttering slightly from an outside breeze. He answered my unasked question, as if reading my thoughts. “Wren’s still sleeping. Jye went for a jog, saying they were grabbing all the horde mordexi. Something about protein, I wasn’t listening.”

  “Tam and Gigi?” I asked.

  “Who?”

  “Axel…”

  The blond scoffed. “Tam went back after the scout to fetch her ear. Gigi’s gone with her. I didn’t ask why. I had other concerns at the time.” He stared pointedly at me. “Still do.”

  There was a crinkle to his brow and a tightness to his lips that told me he wanted to say more but was hesitant. It was unlike Axel to not feel comfortable speaking his first thoughts. The only times I found he didn’t was when it concerned me. At least this wasn’t that unfathomable sadness. Still, it worried me.

  “What aren’t you saying?” I asked after a moment.

  “You… killed someone.” He didn’t add “for me,” but it rested in his expression. His gaze darted away, breaking eye contact. When he continued, his voice was strained and low, “Are you good?”

  Relieved that’s all this was, I smiled.

  “Oh, no. I feel guiltier than I’ve ever felt. Like if I think about it too much, I’ll throw up.”

  As justified as my actions were, that didn’t stop the gaping pit of remorse that threatened to swallow me up. The previous party kills had been a puddle in comparison to this flood. And it was all pooling into each other. Each death, something harder to wallow through. Yet it was a path I would continue to choose to tread.

  Maybe it was bad for my mental health to take responsibility for each person’s stolen life. But if I didn’t, I wouldn’t feel human anymore. It went hand in hand with taking all the bodies back to Earth.

  Axel’s expression dropped further. What was he thinking?

  “You should’ve run… I thought you’d run.”

  “I know.”

  “You were meant to run,” he said, his voice pinched.

  I stared. “And let you die, yeah?”

  Axel cleared his throat, his gaze wavering. “That might’ve been my plan.”

  “Bit of a shit plan.”

  “In the heat of the moment, it seemed pretty good to me,” he said, laughing dryly. “You’d live, and that was the point.”

  Unable to stop myself, I sat up, meeting Axel at eye level. The anger simmering inside my stomach surprised me. I shook my hand loose from his, more annoyed by his touch than comforted now, and said, “I promised you that I’d see the end of this with you. Do you really believe I’m not good for my word?”

  His eyes went wide. “You— I—”

  “And did you ever stop to think about how I’d feel afterward? After you—” I couldn't make out the rest of it, swallowing back the grief at the thought, my throat tight.

  The blond’s brows furrowed, and he appeared taken aback. His mouth opened as if to say something but then closed. This repeated several times. I let him continue to try, watching the expressions ripple across his face. There was shock, pain, a glimmer of delight which made no sense, and then it settled on simple sadness.

  “I just wanted you to live, Lee,” he said finally, the words flat and delivered in such a defeated tone, it made me question just how little faith he had in me. There was some of that old unhinged mourning mixed in with his emotions, but he was still mostly anchored here. I wouldn’t lose him to that just yet. I could press harder. No. I wanted to push. His behaviour wasn’t unacceptable.

  I took a deep breath.

  Perhaps this was the only way to get through to him. To bring him some accountability about his actions. He couldn’t rush in like that, couldn’t let himself mean so little. He was always throwing himself into the fray. Since it seemed like he cared about nothing else, this was the only thing I could think of.

  “You owe me.”

  His head tilted in confusion.

  “A life. For the one I’ve taken.” I breathed out to still myself. “It’s a shit trade, but if you think yours has such little value, I can take that responsibility off your hands.”

  Understanding of what I was asking dawned on him.

  If he promised me his life, he couldn’t just do as he wanted with it.

  It was my only solution to his ridiculous antics. A way of enforcing accountability for his actions.

  He chuckled, no mirth in it, the darkness of his eyes deepening. “My life's already long been yours.”

  At any other time, I might've pointed out how cliche and corny the line was. But instead, his words stoked a sleeping rage and fear inside me, something I’d put to rest to focus on other more pressing matters. I’d pushed down the dread, buried it in the clear and meeting Bia and dealing with clean up.

  His casual admission reminded me of his near dead body.

  The image of Axel, eyes empty, limply held in Adrien's grasp pierced me.

  My emotions boiled over, logic flying out of the window. Should he already hold me the arbiter of his worth, so be it!

  “Well, if your life is mine, then who are you to fucking throw it away?” I lashed out, my patience for his unspoken grief having worn thin to the point of atoms. I didn’t want to coddle him on this. He’d known exactly what he was doing when we were facing Adrien.

  I couldn’t go through it again.

  Losing Axel…

  My hands found the collar of his jacket, and I pulled him close, knuckles whitening with my frustration. I pushed my face near his, wanting him to see just how it had affected me.

  His brows were high, his breathing rapid.

  “If you really think it's mine… Shouldn’t you treat other’s possessions preciously?” My voice broke midsentence, and my own despair split through the rage. Losing strength, my hands dropped loosely to my lap. The truth spilled from me, hot and unfiltered. “If you’d died, Axel— It’d be just like after Chrissie. You can’t do that to me. Not now that we… You can’t abandon me like that again. I wouldn't survive it this time.”

  It was the heart of the matter. It was why I thought I should say no back in Tentworld, even if I wanted to see what we could be. Axel loved me, but he could leave me so easily. He always had. But for me, the real truth was, if I didn’t have him somehow, somewhere, I wouldn’t exist. He was integral to me, as essential as air, and it’d taken until him dying to Adrien to fully prove it to me.

  Something in my words tipped Axel over the edge.

  It happened in slow motion.

  One moment his eyes were large, watery, as if stricken to his core, then his expression transformed entirely. The surprise and hurt shifted, corrupted, became something else. It was beyond that unfamiliar grief: it exceeded sorrow.

  It was an endless void of guilt.

  I fell back in shock. Just looking at Axel made me choke on my words, so horrified by the depth of guilt reflected in his eyes that I couldn’t breathe. I was drowning in it, suffocated by it. And then it was gone, replaced with a distance, as though he were looking elsewhere.

  He didn’t react more than that.

  Axel just sat there, staring blankly forward, as if replaying something again and again in his head. My heart hammered in my chest, still unsure what I'd seen, what I’d glimpsed. It was guilt under that grief, an undefinable chasm of guilt. From what? What had he done?

  Or what hadn’t he done?

  I swallowed, reaching out a hand to lay on his shoulder.

  He didn’t move.

  “Axel?” I asked, so quietly it couldn’t even be called a whisper.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Again, nothing.

  “Axel.”

  He didn’t respond.

  I started to shake him gently, feeling sick, slipping a hand into one of his loose ones, unable to comprehend that I’d put him into this catatonic state. This was what I'd been afraid of for so long, what I'd been trying to avoid! I’d been pulling him back from the brink of this the entire time. But now I’d Spartan kicked him into it somehow.

  What had I said to trigger this?

  “Axel!”

  Still, no reaction.

  Normally, my hand in his centered him, but this was so much more extreme. He’d never disappeared like this. It wouldn't be enough. Panicking, concern tightening my lungs, I wrapped shaky arms around him, pulling him close, pressing every part of myself against him, trying to draw him back with my presence.

  The look on his face struck an indescribable fear into me. It was blank. Devoid of anything.

  Axel wasn’t here.

  What had I done?

  Had I lost him?

  My eyes stung, and I tucked my face into the crook of his neck, terrified, unable to handle his empty expression, my pulse pounding in my ears. The world felt like it was rushing to close in on me, smothering me.

  I'd fucked up so bad.

  I'd known he could break, and I'd pushed him too far. A gaping guilt and fear ate at me. What if he never came back? What if he just stayed like this? And I'd done this to him. And he’d be gone. He’d be gone. He’d be gone!

  I'd known. I'd fucking known!

  If I just had—

  “Axel, please,” I murmured into his neck, my tears welling against his skin, pushing myself into him, like maybe I could claw my way inside and find him there and draw him back. “Please.” My words might as well have been babbles of useless sounds.

  “I wasn't telling the full truth. It wouldn't be just like after Chrissie.” I took a shuddering breath, the air not making it far past my closing throat. “It'd be worse. It'd be so much fucking worse.”

  He was still quiet.

  “Please. Come back.”

  I was begging now, pleading as sobs began to shake me, the world blurring, Axel’s still unreactive form barely anything at all. How could I kill someone to save him and still lose him?

  It wasn't fair.

  It wasn't right!

  “Axel, I...”

  And it was my fault. Because he was always so close to breaking, losing that link to reality, and I knew that. I just, I had to let him know that he was important to me, that he couldn’t do crazy shit anymore, that I—

  I said, “I just want you here with me... Always.”

  It was truer than I would've admitted in other circumstances.

  Perhaps it'd been true my whole life.

  “Always is a bit much.”

  A strangled laugh escaped me through my crying. Something had connected to him. He was back. The relief that filled me could've raised the dead. I inhaled, the breath half snot.

  “I hate you,” I said, and it wasn't what I meant at all.

  His hand came up to rest at the back of my head—which felt stuffed with wool—and I allowed my hold on him to loosen, sniffling, feeling weightless in a sickly way, suddenly aware of just how tightly I'd been hanging to him. I pulled away, head hanging low, not wanting to expose the emotions on my face. He’d seen me crying before, but this was different.

  Using his other hand, he dipped his fingers under my chin to raise my gaze to meet his. He was smiling but barely. His eyes were soft, reddened.

  I couldn't read what any of his expression meant.

  “What about what I want?” he asked.

  Scrubbing at my face trying to clear the wetness, the anger and panic deflated but pettiness remained, I grumbled, “What do you want?”

  Axel paused, the curl of his smile turning mischievous.

  “I have a thing for men in tears, you know. It’s cute.”

  Scowling, irritated by his blasé change in subject, I replied, my voice scratchy, “You and I have very different definitions of cute.”

  He hadn't answered my question. Axel’s hand dropped from my chin, a self-amused smirk now sitting on his lips.

  “Unfortunately, to me, even your ugly crying is attractive.”

  I shouldn't have laughed, but I did. It sputtered out from me.

  Fucking Axel. At the very least, his teasing meant he was feeling better, feeling himself. And him making me laugh was loosening the anxiety of what had just happened.

  What could have happened.

  I’d nearly lost him, I could feel it. It was a tremor in my hands in my lap. It was a detached horror in the back of my head, pulsing with worry. His mind had slipped beneath the surface of that brokenness, and he’d disappeared entirely. Whatever thread had kept him here had finally snapped with my words, with the dawning of confronting that guilt.

  But Chrissie had been more than half our life ago, his abandonment of me a long cold issue. And I’d never blamed him for it. Sure, it’d destroyed me, but his breaking my heart back then couldn’t be the source of this. He hadn’t known about that until Tentworld. And these dips in sanity, these episodes, had happened long before then. However, this was tied to it, somehow.

  Axel’s expression had evened. “I'll try to treat it more carefully. My life.” The blond’s head tilted in mockery. “Well, your life.”

  I didn't correct him. After all, it’d become clear to me that his life was as precious to me as mine, if not more so. But maybe I understood his actions against Adrien a little bit. I’d died for him back in Nabu’s Dungeon. And now he’d done it for me. Perhaps we were even. Perhaps our lives did belong to each other.

  My tears dried as the moment passed. I let it go without comment. I didn’t want to push again. I couldn’t risk it. He was more unstable than he’d ever been. Fuck. This was more than two steps back. This was a whole marathon in reverse. Now whatever progress I’d made to understanding this side of him had been reset. It frustrated me beyond compare.

  The tension and anxiety of losing him still clasped at my heart, an iron grip that wasn’t fading, only squeezing tighter as I tried to ignore it.

  And I couldn’t do anything about it.

  Well… there was one thing I could do to alleviate it.

  I coughed to clear the air. “When are Tam, Jye, and Gigi coming back?”

  “Not sure.” His tone was casual, as though he hadn't just been completely nonverbal and nonreactive. As though he hadn't disappeared. I decided to play along, anxiousness twirling infinitely inside me. There wasn't anything he'd explain to me anyway. At this point, I don’t know if anything could ever justify what was happening to him, what he was hiding.

  “You didn't ask them, huh?” I replied.

  With a huff, I laid down on the floor of the tent, pulling a blanket over me. While he could just ignore his outbursts, his breakdowns, the ache in my chest was not granting me the same luxury. In the back of my mind, fear was shrieking that I'd nearly lost him twice. That I could lose him at any time.

  There was one thing I knew would silence these worries. It was what had comforted me after Adrien's defeat.

  I’d acknowledged that I needed it. But more importantly, I wanted it. And it was the one thing I could do. The only thing I could do to stop the screaming in my head.

  “I'm going to get some more rest while I can,” I said.

  Axel began to get up. “I might go for—”

  I took a breath. “That was an invite.”

  His head tilted.

  Laying out an arm, feeling stiff and awkward, and tenser than a bowstring, I patted the padding next to me. “To rest here. With me.”

  He stared and said, “What?”

  My cheeks stung, unsure how else to phrase it without it sounding childish. The desire itself was rather juvenile, but I didn't have a say about that. It was what my body needed right now to stop the cacophony of worst-case scenarios playing on loop in my head.

  His brow raised in genuine confusion. “Are you saying you want to… cuddle?”

  Mutely, I nodded.

  “I'm starting to worry you've been replaced.”

  Like he had any right to say that.

  Despite his words, he was by side in the next moment, under the blanket, his arms slipping hesitantly around me. I let myself reciprocate, just as unconfident, pulling him near, unsure about limb placement but just that feeling him close would calm me. Both of us shifted until the position felt comfortable, natural, folding into each other like jigsaw pieces.

  Axel’s legs slotted between mine, his hands around my back and mine curled about his. I could feel our breathing slowly fall into sync.

  He was warm.

  I was glad I'd realised what this meant to me. How much I needed it, to feel him. I might've asked him to completely cover my body with his, layer over me like a blanket, to feel the weight of his presence confirmed into me, but that could so easily be misconstrued that this would be enough.

  Having him here, face to face was enough.

  Gradually, like a drawing in the sand washed away by a gentle tide, my worry about losing him eased. In its place, a sense of security formed. Held in his arms, holding him, it was safe.

  He wasn't gone.

  He wasn’t leaving.

  He was here with me.

  I could lay here forever, listening to the rise and fall of his chest.

  “You smell terrible,” Axel said.

  “You don't smell too crash hot either, bleach bath.”

  He'd obviously cleaned off most of the mordexi blood with baby wipes while I'd been unconscious, but the scent of it still clung to him. It was unpleasant and ammonia-like, but I'd become desensitized, having nosed my face into his skin earlier.

  Our resulting laughter echoed into each other, the vibration of it blending between us. The warmth emanating from him transferred to me, filling my chest, thrumming into each of my limbs. Struck by a memory, I decided I would be a man of my word; I’d be following through with clarifying our boundaries. Bravery and an unfamiliar tenderness pushed me to my next venture.

  “Axel?” I asked, softly.

  “Yeah?”

  “We wake up like this.”

  His response was a tight, “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Do you want to… go to sleep like this as well?”

  “Of course.”

  His arm adjusted about me, nestling him minutely closer.

  For a man usually of so many words, he was being awfully tightlipped. Was he worried I'd suddenly change my mind if he spoke too much? I checked his expression, meeting his gaze, but the only thing on his face was a serenity, similar to when he slept. It loosened his half-lidded eyes and softened his face. He was so close, his slow breath warm on my skin. He smiled at me, and I found myself smiling back.

  I felt at peace.

  Just as I was beginning to doze off, Axel asked quietly, “Can I kiss you?”

  My heart froze, my mind suddenly very awake, a thousand thoughts rushing through my head. Was he… Did he think this was… No. He knew better, he understood. This wasn't him asking for something I didn't want. Axel knew me.

  Trusting him, I nodded.

  He bent his head down and pressed his lips to my brow. It was gentle and tender, his lips soft against my forehead.

  It was the sweetest thing he could've done.

  I pushed the crown of my head under his chin, afraid of the expression on my face, of the fact he might see the tears in my eyes. He always knew how to take me off guard, his emotions and feelings so clear to me but his thoughts forever difficult to understand.

  The gesture had been so unexpected, so loving, so unassuming, that I didn’t know how to react.

  He saved me the trouble.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “For what?” I asked, dazed.

  “For being alive.”

  Truly, the man was sappy. I made a face. “You’re so cringe sometimes.”

  His chest vibrated against me as he chuckled. “It’s your fault.”

  “Yeah, yeah, pass the blame onto me. You always used to.”

  He snickered. “I did, didn’t I? Remind me, why were you even friends with me?”

  “Probably the same reason you were friends with me,” I said, subconsciously nuzzling closer.

  “Lack of options?”

  “That’s the one.”

  The tent filled with our laughter.