Obsidian: The Sentinel Code Book One, page 55
“Come on, boy.” I knelt carefully. Scratched behind his ears. “Let's go home.”
Viktor helped me up. His hand steady at my back. The ring catching starlight.
We walked back inside together. Through corridors I'd run as a child. Past portraits of ancestors who'd made their own impossible choices. Toward chambers that felt like home instead of a cage.
Staff nodded as we passed. Smiled. Whispered. But not with judgment. With approval. With relief that we'd survived.
At my door, Viktor stopped. Turned to me with something soft in his eyes.
“Thank you,” he said. “For choosing me. For fighting for us.”
“Thank you for staying.” I pulled him close. Kissed him slow and deep. “For refusing to leave even when it would've been easier.”
“Never easier.” He smiled against my lips. “You're worth every scar. Every fight. Every moment of fear.”
We stepped inside. Apollo bounded ahead, claiming his spot on the bed like he owned it.
Viktor locked the door behind us. Not to keep the world out. Just to keep us in. Safe. Together. Whole.
I looked at him in the lamplight. The ring on his finger. The medals on his chest. The scars on his skin. Every piece of him earned. Survived. Loved.
“What happens next?” I asked.
“We rebuild. We heal. We figure out how to live in a world where Marcel and Élodie don't exist anymore.” He crossed to me. Took my face in his hands. “And we stop running from what we are.”
“What are we?”
“Yours and mine.” Simple. Final. “Together. Whatever that looks like.”
I kissed him. Poured eighteen years of grief and two weeks of survival and every moment of love in between into it.
When we broke apart, breathless and smiling, the future didn't look so heavy anymore.
It looked like possibility. Like mornings in bed and nights on rooftops. Like balancing duty and desire. Like choosing each other every day despite everything that would try to pull us apart.
It looked like living.
Not just surviving. Not just existing.
Actually, honestly, beautifully living.
And that, I realized, was exactly what my mother had wanted for me all along.
To find someone who made the darkness bearable. Who stood beside me in the storm. Who loved me not despite my broken pieces, but because of them.
Viktor was that person. Had always been that person.
And I was done pretending otherwise.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Greyson Vale is an exciting new voice in gay romance fiction. With a talent for crafting swoon-worthy love stories filled with crackling chemistry, Greyson’s novels explore the complexities of modern gay relationships and the search for lasting connection.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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Thank you for walking through the dark with me.
Greyson Vale, Obsidian: The Sentinel Code Book One
