& ᴜɴᴅᴇʀ/ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ

Of course it would always be part of Orion. Silas had stood at Eve's side for centuries. He'd seen what the powers of the Underworld could do to a person. He'd watched Eve fight them every day and still refuse to become them.

“You keep saying that like I don't understand danger.” His hands were sharp now. Precise. Almost severe.

“I know what you're saying. I know this could happen again. I know next time it could be worse.” His jaw tightened. “I know you could kill me.”

A faint sting still lingered beneath his skin where Orion's darkness had nearly drained the life from him.

He welcomed it.

It kept his hands from shaking.

“You're not a threat I have to endure.”

The words came easily. The next ones didn't.

“You're my—”

The word caught. Hard.

“Fuck, Ori.” His voice broke around the name.

“You're my everything.”

“Wow,” she signed back, tapping her pencil once against the page. “Brutal.” A faint smile tugged at her mouth despite herself.

Then, because he wasn't wrong, she glanced down at the sketch again. “I was still working.”

His hands moved more easily than hers ever did. Cleaner. Faster. Effortless. There was something unfair about it. Like he was speaking a language that belonged to him instead of borrowing one that didn't. Mal caught enough to follow. What she missed, she filled in from context.

She flipped the sketchbook around and studied the bike, matching lines to metal. He had a point. The front fork needed more weight. She'd been too generous with the curve of the tank. She made a few quick corrections, then paused over the lower half of the engine.

You aren’t in charge of me.

No. He wasn’t. He knew that. That wasn’t the point.

He exhaled slowly through his nose and made himself stay where he was, made himself keep his hands loose at his sides even though everything in him wanted to close the distance, wanted to take Orion in his arms and make him understand through sheer physical proximity what words apparently weren’t doing.

Now it made sense why he kept looking at her mouth while she talked. Mal angled the page so the light hit it better. The sketch was good if she did say so herself. She’d caught the hard cut of the seat, the weight of the frame, the little scuff near the lower side. It wasn’t finished, but it was close.

She shifted the sketchbook in one hand and answered with her other, signing as she spoke, slower than she would have liked but clear enough. “See? Wasn’t kidding. Your bike’s interesting.”

She caught the surprise that briefly crossed his face. That was fair. Most people in this town barely managed basic manners, let alone ASL.

She shrugged. “Learned last summer,” she said, signing that too. “I was bored.”

The diner door opened behind her with a groan of hinges. She ignored it. Granny had a steady stream of customers.

A shadow fell across the page. Mal’s pencil stopped. She looked up.

The guy standing beside the motorcycle had one hand wrapped around a to-go cup from Granny’s, and the other hung loose by his side.

He wasn’t speaking. Just looking at her. Then at the sketchbook. Then at his bike.

Mal shut the sketchbook halfway but didn’t move from the wall. “Relax,” she said. “I wasn’t stealing it.”

His gaze drifted to her mouth as she talked, then down to her sketchbook again before looking back up at her eyes.

My problem.

The phrase hit harder than the near-mauling had.

A laugh almost came out of him. As if Silas had any idea how to stand in the same room with him and keep his own heart out of it.

"You don't get to walk away from me. I don't care about the flames, or your eye color, or even that your bloodlust almost made you kill me. I couldn’t care less if you hurt me. Just don't lock yourself away from me. You come to me, understand?"

“You’re right,” he signed, his movements deliberate, unhurried. “I wouldn’t like you half as much.”

“You think she remembers too?” he asked, his voice dropping. The thought that Eve might have orchestrated their reunion sent a strange mix of hope and unease through him. “That this was all a setup?”

He thought back to that first meeting—Eve insisting he was the only one qualified for the job despite his unconventional background. How she’d emphasized that only he could protect Nyx. At the time, he’d assumed she meant his combat skills, his history with dangerous clients. Now he wondered if she’d meant something else entirely

“Oh she definitely knows” was the final verdict she came up with. Always moving the pieces like a battle strategy

Eve turned away from her son’s questioning gaze, her decision pressing down on her shoulders. She couldn’t meet George’s eyes either. Not yet. Silence stretched between them, broken only by the distant sound of the twins playing downstairs.

“We need to tell the girls,” Eve said, her voice steadier than she felt. “They deserve to know why their brother is leaving.”

She moved toward the door, needing space. Air. The hallway seemed to stretch endlessly before her, each step slower than the last. How would she explain this to Freya and Nyx? They were too young to understand the darkness in their bloodline, too innocent to comprehend the sacrifices their family would have to make.

Eve stopped at the top of the stairs, her hand tightening around the banister. The home they had built together suddenly felt fragile, as if it might crumble around them. She had fought so hard to create this sanctuary. To shield her children from the legacy of blood and battle that had defined her own childhood.

George exchanged a look with Orion that conveyed what his words might not have been able to. Their son caught up quickly, bending down to give his mother a quick kiss on the head while making his way down to find the twins.

“It’s happening to him, George,” she said, her voice breaking. “I need to take him away, teach him to control it before it controls him.”

Eve looked between her husband and her son, gratitude and guilt twisting together in her chest. George’s steadiness grounded her, but this was her doing.

Eve hesitated. The Wild Hunt was her domain, but not a place for the uninitiated. The battles, the bloodlust, the endless cycle of death and rebirth. All of it would overwhelm Orion before he ever had a chance to learn control.

Even when Orion was born and he didn’t seem to inherit those traits, they kept holding their breath. It was a matter of it, not when.

“When do you leave?” He finally asked as he closed the distance between them and rested his chin over her head with full body sigh

You. Not we.

“You know,” Silas signed, his hands moving with practiced ease as he worked the carburetor, “I think I prefer you watching me work to criticizing me.”

“You’re still as stubborn as ever,” he murmured, brushing a strand of hair from her face. “Your mother hired me to protect you, not to…” His voice faltered, his thumb tracing the line of her jaw. Not to fall in love with you all over again.

The thought alone sent dread curling through Eve’s chest. Not because he wouldn’t understand—he would. He always did. But neither of them had ever wanted this. George had been her anchor through every storm. This was different.

This was their son.

“He needs to know what’s happening.” She brushed a strand of Orion’s now-white hair back from his face, her touch lingering for a moment too long.

Eve rose, her movements smooth despite the weight in her chest, and crossed to the door. “George,” she called into the hallway, her voice carrying more urgency than she meant to show. “I need you in here.”

Footsteps answered drawing closer with each passing second.

Her mouth went dry.

She had faced gods. Monsters. Led armies without hesitation.

The image that greeted him did little to soothe him. Between Orion’s obvious apprehensive body language and Eve’s concern that practically screamed in his own head “what’s happening?” No point dancing around it when all three of them knew better

“Something’s-” messed up , different, wrong “changed. Mom understands it better than me” Orion signed as his eyes went from one parent to the other. He almost shrank into himself, trying to see if that would help with the noise. Even if the only solution was the one his mother already had decided on

“Impress you?” he signed, his hands moving with deliberate flair before reaching for his tools. “I thought that’s what I’ve been doing all along.”

He settled into the work with practiced ease, his fingers moving over the engine in a steady, familiar rhythm. It grounded him, even as his thoughts churned with memories that didn’t feel entirely new. Still, every so often, he glanced up—just to check, to make sure Orion was still there.

When there were no words to interchanged between them the air around the shop settled into a familiarity that was almost dream like for him. The type of thing that was so delicate it could break if you breathe the wrong way.

“I remember the first time I pledged myself to you,” he said softly, the words catching somewhere between memory and confession. “You were so certain. So fearless.” A pause. “Just like now.”

The memory rose, vivid and unrelenting—her hand outstretched, offering him something no one else ever had. Choice. Freedom. Something that had felt dangerously close to hope.

“I’ll always be a stubborn spitfire” she whispered the nickname he has given her with a prideful note