Oliver
The cottage doesn’t feel like a place we borrowed anymore. It feels claimed.
Not in the territorial way my father would have meant it, no banners, no authority stamped into the walls but in the quiet, intimate sense that something irreversible happened here. The kind of change that doesn’t announce itself loudly but settles deep, rearranging everything around it.
Sophia moves through the space with bare feet and a cardigan pulled around her shoulders, gathering the last of our things. The light filtering through the trees outside is pale and early, mist clinging low to the ground. Dawn hasn’t fully committed yet. Neither have I.
The mark burns faintly through the bond, not pain, not hunger. Just awareness. A steady pulse that reminds me she’s there even when she isn’t touching m
