He straightens like a ridge being set under pressure. “Freya.” His voice — low, wary.
“I listened,” I say. “To comm-traffic. The base… cargo. The talk in the dark. Trebuchet’s name... your clan’s old dogs wanting to tear this down.” I don’t soften my words. The cold night air scratches them sharp in my throat.
His eyes narrow — red hot in the darkness. “You shouldn’t have seen that.”
“I did.”
He doesn’t move. The wind whips his cloak around bone-plated shoulders. Outside, the forest moon’s peaks glint faint in distant starlight. I can smell damp earth, pine from the lower terraces, and the metallic aftertaste of fear.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask, voice trembling — anger beneath the calm. “Why did I have to hear it from dead lips on a comm line? Let me decide what I want to do.”
He’s silent for a long stretch. Then he steps forward, closer than I expect. He smells of cold leather, night wind, forest soil. Warm sweat still lingers in the folds of his cloak.
He lowers his head. His voice — not a growl, but low, bone-deep, ragged: “You were never the weakness.”
I blink. The world shifts.
He lifts his chin. “I was.”
The words hit so hard I stagger back a bit. I didn’t expect those words from him. Not raw. Not unraveling.
“Why?” I whisper. Hurt, fear, fury — all tangled.
His eyes close. The ridge of bone along his jaw tenses. Then he exhales, slow, heavy. “Because I thought if I sealed your world off — kept the beasts away — I was protecting you. I thought fear could shield you from the claws. But I forgot something sacred.”
He opens his eyes. I see stars, storm clouds, something ancient and broken inside those red pits.
“Strength isn’t in walls, Freya. Strength — real strength — is in trust. In open scars, in shared blood, in living, together.”
I swallow hard, taste iron on my tongue from my own anger. My vision blurs for a second — tears I don’t trust.
I press a palm to my stomach. My fingers tremble.
“You can’t protect me from this,” I say. “Not by hiding things. If this war comes — I won’t crawl behind your armor.”
His hand moves, slow, deliberate. Clawed fingers pop out, not with threat, but with softness. I see the small scars of past wars — hand-scars, claw-scars — etched in his calloused palm.
He touches my cheek. Light. Gentle. Something I’m not sure I deserve any more.
“I don’t want your fear,” he murmurs — voice cracked low. “I want your fire. Your anger. Your truth. Lean with me. Fight with me. Not for me. With me.”
I swallow. The night air tastes cold. The pine-mist touches my skin. My heartbeat echoes in my ears — slow, uneven. Alive.
I stand still, letting him hold me. Letting the promise hang between us like a blade.
“Then we fight,” I whisper. “If this breaks… we stop it. Together.”
He doesn’t say anything. He just pulls me tighter, bones pressing through cloth, warmth spreading under skin. His cloakwraps both of us — a shroud of dark cloth under a sky of distant stars.
For a moment, time erases. The world falls away.
I close my eyes. I breathe him in: sweat, leather, danger — and trust.
I let it anchor me.
Later, when I finally crawl into bunk — exhaustion heavy in my bones — I don’t hear the life-support humming. I only hear the emptiness.
I imagine the comm feed again — the static, the whispers, the names. Rebirth. Return. Softening influence. Trebuchet’s name like poison on the air.
