Page 137 of The Hyena’s Guardian

Matt noticed the direction of his thoughts. “I’m not dead.”

“I am aware.”

“You keep checking anyway.”

Theron looked back toward the city lights outside the window, but the bond betrayed the truth before he could bury it completely.

After centuries spent watching everyone he cared for disappear while he remained trapped beneath the mountain, some part of him still struggled to trust survival when it was finally standing directly in front of him.

“I know,” Matt said softly.

The gentleness in his voice hit harder than reassurance would have.

Theron kept his attention on the valley because looking at Matt felt more dangerous than the confession itself. “I spent centuries expecting to lose everyone eventually.”

The honesty slipped out before he could stop it.

A thoughtful silence settled between them while Matt chose his next words carefully. “You didn’t lose me.”

The bond tightened sharply beneath the quiet certainty in Matt’s voice.

Theron closed his eyes briefly because some part of him still did not fully understand how to survive hearing things like that without expecting them to be taken away.

And somewhere beneath that realization came another thought, quieter but no less terrifying.

For the first time since leaving the mountain, Theron felt time moving inside his body. The sensation was subtle, little more than an awareness that the stillness holding him unchanged for centuries had finally released him. The seal no longer sustained him, and although he could not yet know what that meant for the years ahead, one truth settled inside him with strange weight.

His life was finally his own.

Time would move again. Not beneath stone or according to the needs of the prison, but forward, carrying him toward something he had never expected to possess.

A future.

Matt stepped closer then, close enough that warmth moved clearly through the bond between them again. “You know,” he said carefully, “at some point I’m going to have to explain cell phones to you.”

Theron grimaced. “I already dislike the name.”

Matt laughed softly.

The sound settled somewhere dangerously deep inside Theron’s chest.

Outside the window, dawn began overtaking the valley below them while the modern world continued moving forward in endless streams of light beyond the glass.

Theron stood inside the living world now instead of buried beneath it, and despite everything still waiting beyond that room, the thought no longer terrified him quite as much as it should have.

The room assigned to them was plain, containing little more than a bed, two chairs, and a narrow bathroom. Theron barely registered any of it. Exhaustion had settled so deeply into his body that remaining upright required concentration.

Matt kicked the door shut behind them and leaned against it with his eyes closed, finally allowing the exhaustion he had hidden from everyone else to show. Through the bond, Theron felt the pain of the shift, the strain of the escape, and beneath both, the lingering disbelief that they had survived together.

For several quiet seconds, neither of them spoke.

The silence felt different now. No whispers moved beneath it. No pressure lingered behind Theron’s thoughts waiting to invade them. The bond existed between them without the mountain twisting through it for the first time since they had met.

The absence felt almost unreal.

Then someone knocked sharply against the door.

Matt groaned. “If that’s another apocalypse, I’m unavailable.”