Chapter 39: Catch up
He was sure—painfully sure—that if he ever told anyone the truth, if he dared to say it plainly, I died once already, they would look at him the same way Misty had when he first learned to flinch: like a problem to fix, not a person to listen to.
So he said nothing more.
And Serathine, standing in the golden hush of his borrowed room, gave him silence in return—not the kind that demanded more, but the kind that folded around the moment without pressing it open.
"You don’t have to meet any of them from now on," she said after a breath, her voice calm but firm, as though this decision had already been carved into stone. "The security is briefed. No one will approach you without your consent. Even then—if the main bodyguard feels it might be unsafe, he is authorized to intervene on your behalf."
Lucas turned his head slightly, eyes flicking up to meet hers for the first time that morning. He didn’t speak right away—just let the words settle, their meaning clear.
"Thank you," he said quietly, and meant it.
Serathine shook her head once—not dismissively, but with a kind of steady guilt that had no room for self-forgiveness.
"There’s no need," she replied. "I should have done it from the beginning."
She paused then, as if weighing whether to shift the conversation, whether now was the right time to return them both to the world of physical things—of bloodwork and medical charts, of science trying to make sense of what memory couldn’t explain.
"The doctor said we should expand the hormonal panel," she continued, her tone measured, almost clinical now. "He believes your body may still be under distress from the history of suppressants. What happened yesterday may have been the result of an overloaded response—delayed, fractured. He advised we avoid administering anything else for a while. No stabilizers, no artificial support. Just let your body catch up."
Lucas blinked slowly, absorbing it—not surprised, not afraid, just... resigned.
As if he had already known, deep down, that something inside him had been rewired long ago and was only now beginning to react.