The stone was cold beneath his back.
Lucas knew this dream.
He had been here before, the Hollow Table, the silver chains, and the hands pressing against his bare chest not to heal but to peel.
He had felt his own skin split, had heard his own muffled scream, had woken with the phantom pain still crawling beneath his flesh like something alive and hungry.
But this time was different.
This time, he wasn't on the table.
He was standing at the edge of the clearing, watching.
The Hollow Table sat in the center of that familiar, wrong space, black stone drinking the moonlight, its grooves and channels carved by hands that had long since turned to dust.
The trees around it were twisted, their branches reaching toward the sky like drowned women's fingers, and the air smelled of iron and old blood and something else, something that tasted like ash on the back of his tongue.
And on the table, bound in silver chains that glowed faintly in the dark, was Sebastian.
Lucas tried to move.
Tried to run. Tried to scream.
But his feet were rooted to the earth, his throat sealed shut, his hands frozen at his sides. He could only stand there, helpless, watching as the sky above began to lighten.
"No," he tried to say. The word didn't come.
The sun was rising.
Slow at first, just a thin line of gold on the horizon, bleeding into the purple-gray of early morning.
But the light touched Sebastian's pale skin, and he flinched, his body arching against the chains, his mouth opening in a scream that Lucas couldn't hear.
The silver burned where it touched him. Lucas could see the smoke rising from his wrists, from his ankles, from the collar wrapped around his throat.
And then the sun climbed higher.
Sebastian's skin began to crack.
It started at his hands. The places where the light hit first.
Fine lines spreading across his knuckles like spiderwebs, thin and dark and oozing something that looked like ink but smelled like copper.
Then his arms. His face.
His chest, where his shirt had fallen open, revealing the pale expanse of skin that Lucas had pressed his own chest against a hundred times, a thousand times, in motel rooms and backseats and borrowed beds that never felt like theirs.
The cracks deepened. The light poured in.
Sebastian was burning from the inside out.
And Lucas couldn't move. Couldn't speak.
Couldn't do anything except stand there at the edge of the clearing, watching the person he loved most in the world turn to ash beneath a sun that had never been meant for creatures like him.
Wake up, he told himself. Wake up, wake up, wake up—
But the dream held him tighter.
Sebastian's eyes found his across the clearing.
They were dark, those eyes, darker than Lucas remembered, darker than any human eyes should be, darker than the spaces between stars.
And in them, Lucas saw something that made his chest cave in.
Not fear.
Not pain.
Relief.
Sebastian was glad he was there. Glad Lucas was watching. Glad he didn't have to die alone.
No, Lucas thought, and the word was a scream even if no sound came out. No, no, no, no—
Sebastian's lips moved. Forming words Lucas couldn't hear.
But he didn't need to hear them.
He knew what Sebastian was saying.
He had heard it before, in the dark, in the quiet, in the moments between sleeping and waking when neither of them had the strength to pretend anymore.
I love you. I'm sorry. I love you. I'm sorry.
The sun reached Sebastian's heart.
And Sebastian turned to dust.
Lucas opened his mouth to scream—
---
—and woke up gasping.
The scream ripped out of him before he could stop it, raw and wordless and too loud in the small, dark cabin.
His body moved before his mind caught up, twisting and thrashing, his hands clawing at the blankets tangled around his legs like silver chains, like burning ropes, like everything he couldn't escape.
"Lucas!"
A voice. Close. Too close.
Hands on his shoulders.
Lucas reacted.
He didn't think. Didn't recognize.
He didn't process anything except the presence behind him, the weight pressing down on him, and the touch that his dream-soaked brain registered as a threat.
He swung, elbow first, a move Sebastian had taught him months ago, in a motel room that smelled like cheap detergent and desperation—and connected with something solid.
A grunt. A stumble.
The sound of a body hitting the floor.
Lucas scrambled backward, pressing himself against the headboard, his chest heaving, his eyes wild in the darkness.
His claws were out, digging into the wooden headboard, leaving deep gouges in the grain.
"Easy." The voice came from the floor. Low. Careful. Familiar.
Rohan.
Lucas blinked.
The cabin came into focus. The fire burned down to embers, the stone walls, and the single window showing a sky still dark with night. The blankets twisted around his legs. The pillow on the floor. Rohan sprawled on the wooden planks, one hand pressed to his jaw where Lucas's elbow had caught him.
"You back?" Rohan asked quietly.
Lucas stared at him.
His chest was still heaving. His heart was still pounding. The dream clung to him like smoke, like ash, like the memory of Sebastian's skin cracking beneath the sun.
"I—" His voice cracked. He swallowed. Tried again. "I'm sorry. I didn't—I didn't mean to—"
Rohan sat up slowly, wincing as he touched his jaw again.
"You meant not to be grabbed in your sleep. Can't blame you for that." He paused, his dark eyes steady on Lucas's face. "Bad dream?"
Lucas didn't answer. He didn't have to. His face said everything.
Rohan nodded slowly, as if he understood. He probably did. Rohan had been running from his own dreams for years. Had the missing finger to prove it.
"The Hollow Table?" Rohan asked.
Lucas flinched. "How do you know about that?"
Rohan pushed himself to his feet, moving carefully, keeping his hands visible. He walked to the hearth and knelt, adding a log to the dying fire.
The flames caught, sending shadows dancing across his scarred knuckles.
"Because I've been there," Rohan said quietly. "That's where I met him. My mate."