Vérzavar Ház

Chapter 27: You Needed Time

Their breaths echoed against each other like crashing waves, and she was shaking as she held him. He lowered himself so his head rested upon her chest. Her heartbeat thundered into his ear, and even the melody of that was beautiful.

Her fingers tangled in his hair. "I..."

"I know," Ruhn said. It had never been like that with anyone. Sex had been good, yeah, but this... He was fairly certain his soul lay in splinters around them.

-House of Sky and Breath, pg. 727

Things were... good.

Really, really good.

Smiling, she looked to where Ruhn stood, poised at the mouth of the alley, and wondered at how she had come far enough to feel comfortable in her happiness.

The two of them had begun participating in missions together, each one never willing to allow the other to venture into the night alone. With the breadth of the experience between the two, they had quickly been promoted to leadership, their squadron the most successful in the Ydra faction.

And those roles had brought them here, on a scouting mission in the wee hours of the morning, dodging the cameras of the Crescent City as they scoured the streets for intel. Ruhn had been particularly enthusiastic about this tour, and the shifter couldn't fault him. Lunathion was his home, and while his childhood with his father might not have been the most heartwarming, Lidia knew that the time spent with his chosen brothers in the house on the other end of this alley was something that he yearned to get back.

When she reached his side she wrapped an arm around his back, following his gaze. The house looked the same as when she'd left it. Buttery light cast shafts of light onto the patchy lawn from a few windows on the main floor, but nothing more. She wondered if Flynn and Dec's setup had remained, still glowing blue and green in the dark of Ruhn's bedroom, or if the equipment had been retrieved after they had arrived at the base - if those monitors were the ones filling the room where she and her mate continued to perfect her beer pong skills.

"For some reason I didn't expect it to look the same." The fae male's voice was tight, and Lidia stroked her fingers in a comforting swath over the small of his back. "Everything in my life is so different. Somehow, I suppose, I expected the house to have changed, too."

His throat bobbed.

"I always assumed that I would be so ready to come home, to fall back into the life that the guys and I had before. But now I'm not so sure if that's even possible." Ruhn's eyes found hers in the dark. It would never cease to amaze her, the way they seemed to twinkle like a starlit night, even in the consuming dark of those wee morning hours. "I don't know if it would feel like home anymore."

Lidia's heart ached for him, for his uncertainty. She wished she could grip his jaw and look deep into those glittering pools of indigo and tell him that she understood. To reassure him that his former life was not lost, even if the world around them had changed irrevocably.

But she couldn't do anything of the sort.

She'd never had a home that was worthy of missing; she could barely remember her life with her mother, and her time with her father had been lonely and violent. And then her home had been with Pollux, in whichever pair of sparsely appointed dormitory rooms were assigned to them. Lidia Cervos had no home to mourn, and Ruhn was the only friend she'd ever had - the closest thing she had to family, since the shifter could hardly expect that Hypaxia would be enthusiastic to build a relationship with her half-sister, the Hind.

Lidia sighed. "I don't know much about the concept of home," she began, continuing her soft caress of her hand up the column of his spine. "But I believe that it's less about the house and more about who is in it. You and Tristan and Declan... you're family. And I think this building," she jerked her chin toward the house, "could easily become home again, if the three of you wanted that. And if not, you would make a happy home elsewhere."