"And then I turned to my dad."
Landen's hand stilled for a moment on his back.
"I told him that he was a coward," Adriel said. "That every time he sat there and said nothing while she tore me apart, he was telling me she was right. That I wasn't worth defending." His voice wavered.
He took a shaky breath.
"And then I told them both about you."
Landen's breath caught.
"I told them you love me for me," Adriel said quietly. "That you don't want to change me. That you see me, all of me, and you stay."
Landen was quiet for a long moment. His chest rose and fell. His hand found Adriel's hair again, moved through it slowly.
Then he spoke. "I am so proud of you, baby."
His voice was rough. Thick with something Adriel couldn't name. "So fucking proud of you."
Adriel's eyes burned.
Landen's arms tightened around him, pulled him closer, held him like he was something precious. "I love you," he said. "All of you."
That was all it took.
The tears came again, not the violent sobs from before, but something quieter. Something that felt like release. Like letting go of something he'd been carrying for so long he'd forgotten it was there.
Landen held him through it. His hand in Adriel's hair, his lips pressed to his forehead, his voice murmuring soft, steady words that Adriel couldn't quite hear but could feel.
He was safe.
For the first time in his life, he was safe.
Epilogue
Adriel
Adriel surfaced from sleep slowly, in fragments.
Warmth first; the sheets, the pillow, the heavy comfort of Landen’s bed that still felt like a luxury every time he woke in it. Then sensation, hazy and indistinct, something pulling him upward out of the dark before his mind caught up.
He became aware of his body before he became aware of why. A heaviness in his limbs, a heat pooling low in his stomach, a tightness that didn’t belong to sleep. His hips shifted without his permission, a small, involuntary movement, and then a sound escaped him; soft, confused, caught between dreaming and waking.
Then he opened his eyes.
Landen was between his legs.
The sheet had been pushed down to his thighs. Landen’s mouth was on his cock, and Adriel’s brain short-circuited so completely that for several seconds he just lay there, blinking at the ceiling, trying to reconcile the soft morning light with the devastatingheat of Landen’s tongue dragging along the underside of his cock.
“Oh my… fuck…” Adriel gasped, his hands flying to the sheets, fisting them, his hips jerking upward before Landen’s hand pressed flat against his stomach, holding him down. Landen took Adriel deeper, cheeks hollowing, and hummed; the vibration of it running through Adriel’s cock like electricity.
“Landen… what… oh God…”
Landen pulled off just long enough to press a kiss to the inside of his thigh. His eyes lifted and the sight of him there, between Adriel’s legs, lips swollen and wet, hair falling across his forehead, was so obscene that Adriel’s cock twitched hard against his stomach.
“Happy birthday,” Landen murmured against his skin.
Before Adriel could respond, before he could say anything at all, Landen’s mouth was back on him, and all coherent thought dissolved.