I dismount at the village gate and feel hundreds of eyes turn toward me. Fear, mostly—I’m an eight-foot Fae lord in their tiny human settlement, bronze skin and silver-veined with mountain magic. Even without knowing who I am, they can sense the predator in their midst.
Some of them recognize me. I see it in the way their fear sharpens into something closer to hatred. They know. Hannah must have told them, or they figured it out themselves. Either way, they know their Guardian is the monster who destroyed their protector’s life.
Good. Let them hate me. Their hatred is nothing compared to what I’ve done.
Elder Miriam meets me at the edge of the village square.
She’s old—ancient by human standards, though barely middle-aged by mine—with eyes that have seen too much and a spine that refuses to bend. She looks up at me without flinching, and I respect her for it. Most humans can’t meet my gaze for more than a few seconds.
“Guardian.” Her voice is cold enough to frost the air between us. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
“Your letter didn’t leave much choice.”
“There’s always a choice.” She spits the words like an accusation. “That’s what you don’t seem to understand. What you’ve never understood.”
I could argue. Could point out the irony of a woman lecturing me about choice when she’s the one who summoned me here, who decided Hannah’s fate needed my intervention. But what would be the point?
“Where is she?”
“The hill.” Miriam’s eyes narrow. “Where her parents are buried. The parents who died because of your manipulations.”
I don’t deny it. Can’t.
“She’s dying,” Miriam continues. “The bond sickness has progressed further than any I’ve seen. She barely eats. Barely sleeps. Her body is consuming itself from the inside out.” Her voice cracks, but her gaze doesn’t waver. “She’s the strongest person I’ve ever known, and you’ve broken her.”
“I know what I did.”
“Do you? Do you really?” She steps closer, fearless despite the fact that I could snap her neck with two fingers. “Because I watched that girl grow up. Watched her parents ignore her, watched this village use her, watched her turn herself into a weapon because no one else would protect the people she loved. And then you came along and took even that from her. Took the last thing she had—her agency, her choice, her sense of self.”
“I didn’t come here to be lectured.”
“No.You came here to take her back.” Miriam’s laugh is bitter. “That’s what you do, isn’t it? Take and take and take, and call it love.”
The word hits me harder than it should. Love. Is that what this is? This constant ache in my chest, this desperate need to see her, touch her, know she’s alive?
For a moment—just a moment—I let myself consider it. Seven centuries of existence, and I’ve never felt anything like this. Never rearranged my entire world around another person. Never lain awake at night reaching for someone who wasn’t there. Never felt like I might not survive losing someone I was supposed to own.
If this isn’t love, it’s something close enough that the distinction might not matter.
But I push the thought away. Alphas don’t love. We claim. We possess. We keep. Whatever this feeling is, giving it a name won’t change what I have to do.
“I came to give her a choice,” I say, pulling the dissolution crystal from my cloak. The magic pulses against my palm, ancient and terrible. “A real one, this time.”
Miriam studies the crystal for a long moment. I watch understanding dawn in her eyes—she’s old enough to recognize what it is, what it means.
“You would do that for her? Give up everything?”
“I would do whatever it takes to keep her.” I tuck the crystal away. “If that means letting her go, then I let her go. If it means burning down everything I’ve built so she can choose freely—then I burn it down.”
“That’s not selflessness. That’s still manipulation.”
“Maybe.” I start toward the hill. “But at least this time, she gets to see the strings.”
I feel Miriam’s eyes on my back as I walk away. Let her think what she wants. Let her call it manipulation, strategy, another move in a game I’ve been playing for sixteen years.
She’s not wrong.
But she’s not entirely right either.
