But there was only softness. Only sorrow. Only understanding deeper than anything he deserved.
"You believed in something," she said. "That's not arrogance. That's hope."
"Hope is a weakness."
"Maybe." She shifted closer, her hand sliding up his thigh to grip his forearm. "But so is never trusting again."
The crack in his walls widened. Spread. He could feel it happening and couldn't stop it—didn't want to stop it.
"I told myself I would never be fooled again. Never let a human close enough to betray me. Never let hope make me stupid." His voice had roughened, scraped raw by words he'd never spoken aloud. "And then I found you. Alone in the dark, smelling like fear and rain, and everything I'd sworn to never feel again—"
He couldn't finish.
Delia rose up on her knees, ignoring her ankle, and took his face in her hands.
Her palms were warm against his cheeks. Her fingers trembled slightly where they curved around his jaw, brushing the edges of his tusks. She was so small compared to him. So fragile.
And she held him like he was the fragile one.
"You trusted someone," she said quietly. "And they used that trust to hurt you. That's not a lesson about humans being monsters, Ralvar. That's a lesson about one person being cruel."
"How can you—" He shook his head, and her hands moved with him, refusing to let go. "You know what humans are. What they did to you. How can you defend them?"
"I'm not defendingthem. I'm defendingyou." Her thumbs stroked across his cheekbones, gentle as morning light. "You made a choice to see the best in someone. That choice wasn't wrong.Theywere wrong. You can’t punish yourself forever for someone else's cruelty."
Heat built behind his eyes, sharp and stinging. He hadn't cried in years. Tears were weakness. Emotion was vulnerability, and vulnerability got people killed.
But she was looking at him like he was worth saving. Like his pain mattered. Like he wasn't just a weapon or a shield or a captain, but a person who had lost and grieved and still, somehow, kept going.
"I should hate you," he managed. The words came out broken. "Every instinct I rebuilt after that day says I should hate you."
"But you don't."
"No." He pressed his forehead against hers, the way he'd watched her do to him once, when she was the one needing comfort. Her breath was warm on his face. Her hands were steady on his jaw. "No, I do not."
They stayed like that for a long moment. Breathing together. Foreheads touching. Her fingers in his hair, now, scratching gently at his scalp in a way that made tension he hadn't known he was carrying begin to unravel.
"Tell me about them," Delia said softly. “Keth and the others. Not how they died. How they lived."
The pressure behind his eyes finally broke.
He didn't sob—didn't know if he was even capable of it anymore—but hot tears slid down his cheeks, catching on her fingers. She didn't flinch. Didn't pull away. Just held him while the grief he'd buried for six years finally found its way to the surface.
"Keth laughed like thunder," he heard himself say. "At every joke, every story, he laughed so loud it echoed off the mountains. The others used to complain about it. I miss it every day."
"Tell me more."
So he did.
He told her about Marrus, who carved bone figures for the outpost children and never returned from patrol without wildflowers for his mate. About Thren, barely more than a boy, who'd wanted so desperately to prove himself worthy of his place among the warriors. About Vella, fierce and quiet, whocould track a mouse through a snowstorm and once carried a wounded comrade four miles through enemy territory.
They'd been more than warriors. More than names on stone.
They'd been his family.
And he'd lost them all in a single afternoon because he'd tried to believe in something good.
Delia listened. Held him. Cried with him, though she'd never met them, never would. She wept for his loss like it was her own, and somehow that made the weight of it easier to bear.
