I never thought I would find home in a person.
Home was supposed to be walls and doors, warmth and safety, a place where you could fall asleep without flinching at every sound. For me, "home" had always been a foreign word, a fantasy painted on the spines of the books I devoured when reality was too sharp to survive.
But with Lucan… it felt like maybe—just maybe—I could redefine it.
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When we first joined forces, survival was the only thing on my mind. The city was crumbling, monsters lurked in shadows, and food was scarcer than hope. Yet somehow, in the middle of all that chaos, I found myself watching him.
Lucan didn't bend under pressure—he cut through it. While the rest of us stumbled, he moved with purpose, like the world itself was a battlefield he'd already mapped out.
It terrified me. And it captivated me.
Every time he issued a command, people listened. Every time he stepped into danger, people followed. And every time he walked past me, brushing just close enough that our shoulders almost touched, I felt something bloom in my chest—fragile, dangerous, alive.
I told myself it was gratitude. Respect. The natural awe one felt in the presence of someone extraordinary.
But it wasn't.
It was hunger.
Not for food, not for safety. But for him.
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I had nothing else. No family. No warm memories to cling to when the nights grew cold. My father was buried, my mother rotted in prison, and foster homes had only ever passed me along like a defective toy no one wanted to keep.
But Lucan… he was different. He stayed.
He didn't close doors on me. He didn't raise his voice in drunken rages. He didn't hit, or mock, or sneer.
And even if he was cold—icy, sometimes cruelly distant—his presence never vanished. That alone was enough to make me latch onto him with everything I had.
I told myself, This is what I've been waiting for. Someone permanent. Someone real.
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I loved the way his eyes narrowed when he was deep in thought. I loved how his voice dropped when he gave quiet instructions, like secrets meant only for me. I loved the rare moments when he let down his guard, when his expression softened for a fleeting heartbeat before the mask slid back into place.
I loved his silence.
I loved his stillness.
I loved him.
And when he tolerated my jokes—when the corner of his mouth twitched as if fighting a smile—I convinced myself that meant something.
That maybe, just maybe, he loved me back.
---
Of course, there were cracks.
The stiffness in his shoulders when I sat too close.
The sharpness in his eyes when I touched his arm without asking.
The way he sometimes looked past me, like I was nothing more than a shadow cast in his light.
But I brushed it all aside.
"He's just guarded," I whispered to myself in the dark. "He just needs time. He'll open up. He has to."
Because the alternative—that he didn't want me, didn't care for me at all—was a truth I could not bear.
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Story Made Flesh
At night, when everyone else slept, I would stare at the firelight flickering across his face. I remembered the boy I'd been at thirteen, hunched over The Sealed Realms with a pen in my hand, rewriting him into someone stronger, someone better, someone human.
And now here he was, flesh and blood, breathing in front of me.
My annotations had become reality.
My story had become life.
And Lucan had become…real...
The universe had given me the one thing I had never been able to create for myself: a person to love.
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I swore, silently, every night as the rain beat against broken windows:
I will not lose him.
Not like I lost my father.
Not like I lost my childhood.
Not like I lost every scrap of home I ever dared to hope for.
Lucan was my last chance. My only chance.
And I clung to him like a man clinging to driftwood in a storm, too blinded by desperation to realize the waves were already pulling me under.
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