Not toher.
Not to a human.
But this night — thisone night— she leans, unwittingly, against me.
Just a faint brush of her thigh against my side. Barely there. And yet the moment her warmth meets my armor — even through the thermal blanket — it feels like the first breath after a long winter. A spark beneath stone.
I don’t flinch. I don’t recoil. I don’t break the fragile silence.
Instead… I stay.
Too still. Too close. Too aware.
Because she doesn’t pull away. She doesn’t shrink into herself. She doesn’t do what every other being has ever done in my presence: fear, retreat, scream, or fight.
She justrests.
Quiet.
Soft.
And her trust — unguarded and unashamed — feels sharper than any blade I’ve ever carried.
I should leave. I should flee. Ishouldrecall every lesson ever taught to me in the war camps, every command drilled into my ribcage like fire: Distance keeps you alive. Isolation keeps you whole. Trust no one.
But her presence blooms inside me like heat beneath frost. Like a storm waiting to break.
I turn my head just slightly — slow, careful, almost afraid to disturb the fragile peace — and I watch her sleep.
Her eyelids flutter once, like she’s on the brink of waking, but she stays unconscious. Safe. Unaware of the tempest she stirs within me.
My throat feels thick — weirdly so. Not tight with anger, not hollow with fear.
Justfull.
Full of a feeling I can’t name without invoking that ancient syllable buried deep in my memory.
Jalshagar.
I whisper it under my breath.
A word born in a tongue I rarely access. A concept older than my exile. A calling I never thought I’d hear again.
And yet it rises in my chest like a fire trying to break free.
“Jalshagar…”
The word is a tremor in the dark. Not loud. Not even clear. But real.
I hold my breath as I speak it. Not toward her. Not meant to wake her. But as if saying it aloud anchors it inme— like a spell, or a confession.
Her lashes flutter again, and her hand creeps outward, brushing the blanket near where I’m crouched. Just a finger. Just a whisper of motion.
My body reacts before my mind does.
My claws curl — not in violence, but in tension. A tightening of muscle deeper than thought. A resonance in bone and nerve I thought I buried long ago.
I shouldn’t want this.
