At that, she finally looks up. There is pain in her face. And confusion. And something that might even be the beginning of understanding, though not the kind that soothes.
“You felt cold,” she says quietly.
“I was trying not to crowd you.”
That sounds weak in my own ears. Defensive. I hate it. But she needs the truth more than I need dignity.
Keandra’s gaze drops to the table for one second. “It didn’t feel like that.”
I almost laugh at myself then, bitterly. I stayed back because love said do not force the wounded place, and in staying back, I gave her distance that felt like withdrawal.
I know how to hold a border line under attack with fewer mistakes than this.
“I see that now,” I say.
The ache in the tent changes shape then. Not gone. Not healed. But altered by being named.
Keandra pushes one curl back from her face and lets out a slow breath. “I don’t know what I need from you when I feel like this.”
The admission slices through me. Not because it is refusal. Because it is trust offered in damaged form.
I want to go to her.
I do not.
Another hard choice.
Instead, I say, “Then I will wait until you know.”
That sounds like patience. It also sounds like distance. I see both land in her.
Nothing about this is simple.
Keandra nods once, but not with relief. More like she is accepting the shape of something neither of us knows how to repair tonight.
The fire burns lower. The food cools. The wind touches the tent walls in slow passes.
When we finally lie down, I leave a hand’s width more space between us than I want. My whole body hates it. It feels wrong in my bones. Like sleeping with a blade buried shallow and being told not to pull it free. Yet I leave the space there because she is not leaning toward me and because tonight taking what my body wants would be comfort for myself dressed up as care for her.
That is not the male I want to be for her.
Keandra lies on her side, facing away. Not fully turned from me. Not fully offered either. Distance shaped like caution. I watch the line of her back in the low light until the lamp is nearly gone. My restraint is meant as care. My silence meant to keep from pressing harder on an unseen wound. My space meant as mercy. And yet the tent feels colder for it.
Even so, the female who has begun feeling like the center of my life lies one arm’s length away as if she is farther than the whole stretch between the camp and the capital. That is the worst truth of the night. Not that she is wounded. That I can see it, feel it, and yet not know how to reach her without risking driving her farther away.
I close my eyes long after she has gone quiet. Sleep does not come quickly. Love, I think in the dark, is a much crueler teacher than instinct.
Chapter 26
Keandra
The morning begins wrong, though I do not know that yet.
I only feel it. Not in any way I can name. No obvious danger. No shouted warning. No beasts running wild at the edge of camp. Just a restlessness under everything. The kind that makes me wake before the light has fully changed and lie quietly for a moment listening to the wind move differently against the tent.
Kaiven is already gone.
That should not matter as much as it does. These last quiet, strained days have made every absence sharper. Every small distance bigger. I feel his side of the furs cool beside me and stare at the tent roof for one long breath before sitting up.
