Aiden Porte woke like a blade leaving its sheath, quiet, immediate, and already halfway to alertness before his eyes fully opened.
Something had shifted.
It was not the ordinary brush of nightly currents, not the soft, familiar hum of the homestead at rest. This was a disturbance with teeth to it, a sudden wrongness that tugged at the edge of his senses and pulled him cleanly from sleep. The air felt colder than it should have. The Force, normally a wide, patient ocean tightened into a thin, vibrating thread.
Then the scream came.
Aiden was out of bed in a single motion, bare feet meeting the floor, his breath steady even as his heart spiked. He crossed the hall fast, the darkness giving way to the faint spill of starlight through the windows, and pushed into Lira's room.
"Lira," he said, already at her bedside.
She jerked upright like she had been yanked from deep water, gasping for air, clutching at her own chest. Her eyes wide and unfocused as if the room was not yet real to her. Aiden dropped to his knees beside the bed and immediately gathered her small hands into his, anchoring her.
"Hey, hey," he murmured, voice low, warm, steady. "You're here. I've got you. It was just a dream."
Lira blinked hard, tears spilling over as she turned her face toward him. Her lower lip trembled, and when she spoke her voice wavered with a conviction that gave Aiden chills.
"No it wasn't," she insisted, breath hitching. "It was real. I felt the cold and the wind. I felt you..." Her throat tightened around the words. "You weren't breathing. You were in the forest, surrounded by… dead bodies."
For a moment Aiden's chest went tight, the earlier disturbance threading itself into her fear like it belonged there. He kept his expression gentle anyway, because she needed his calm more than he needed his certainty. Aiden placed his hand along the side of her face, grounding her in the simple fact of touch. "Sweetheart," he said softly, "It was just a dream. Dreams play tricks on us. They sometimes show us what we most fear and make it feel like truth."
He leaned in and pressed a slow kiss to her forehead, letting her feel the steadiness of him. "It's going to be okay."
Lira shook her head fiercely, fresh tears tracking down her cheeks. "No," she whispered, then louder, desperate. "No it's not. Aiden, it was real. I'm telling you..."
"Okay," Aiden said immediately, surrendering the argument without dismissing her. He shifted forward and drew her into his arms, firm and protective, wrapping her like a shield. "Okay. I got you. I'm here."
Lira clung to him with both arms, her small fingers bunching in his shirt. Aiden held her as long as she needed, minutes that felt like an hour, breathing slow, letting his presence become a rhythm her panic could follow. He reached out through the Force without strain, not probing, not pressing, simply letting his light spread in quiet waves through the room with comfort, safety, warmth. A gentle insistence that this place was real, and she was not alone in it.
Gradually, her grip loosened. Her breathing evened out. The tension bled from her shoulders in tiny increments until her head sagged against his chest and her eyelids fluttered.
When she finally slipped back toward sleep, Aiden eased her down carefully, guiding her beneath the blankets like she was something precious and breakable. He tucked the covers around her, smoothed her hair back from her face, and stayed there, kneeling at her bedside, watching until her expression softened and her breathing became the slow, deep cadence of rest.
Only then did Aiden take a deep breath of his own.
He remained still for a few heartbeats, waiting as the Force around them settled again, listening for that same wrongness that had woken him. His presence lingered over the room like a lantern left lit through the night, quiet, unwavering, sending one last, gentle wash of comfort over Lira and the sleeping homestead beyond her walls.
