Page 12 of Renegade Kingdom
“Stay with her,” I said quietly, transferring her weight to him. “Don’t let her be alone right now.”
He nodded, wrapping a supportive arm around the woman’s shoulders and guiding her away. The man she’d attacked was still standing there, pale and shaking, looking like he might be sick.
“Are you hurt?” I asked him.
He shook his head. Then, in a voice barely above a whisper: “She’s right. I did kill him. I remember every second of it. I remember every face, every scream.”
“And you’ll carry those memories for the rest of your life,” I said, not unkindly. “But you can’t let them destroy you. The dead don’t need your guilt. They need you to survive. To make their deaths mean something.”
He didn’t look convinced. I hadn’t expected him to. But he nodded jerkily and turned away, and that was enough for now.
The confrontation had drawn attention. People were staring, whispering, the tension in the camp ratcheting up another notch. I could see it in the way they held themselves, in the tightness of their shoulders and the whites of their eyes.
This group was fragile. Fractured. One good push and they’d shatter completely.
I needed a moment. The bear was too close to the front right now. The rage begging to be released.
I walked to the edge of camp, far enough that I could see without being overheard, and let myself breathe. Let myself feel the bear’s presence properly, without trying to manage it or suppress it.
He was spiralling. I could feel it. The urge to lash out, to tear into these threats to his mate, to rip and rend and destroy anything that might cause her harm. The bear didn’t understand that these people weren’t enemies. He just knew they were unstable, unpredictable, dangerous. And his solution to danger was always the same: eliminate it. He didn’t see the irony that they were so much more like us than anyone else around us.
No, I told him firmly.These people need protection, not violence. They’re not threats. They’re victims.
The bear snarled his disagreement.They could hurt her. Could hurt them all.
And if we hurt them first, we become the monsters they already think we are.
It was still strange to hear my bear. That coming to Nymeria had given him a voice, pushed him to much closer to the surface than he’d ever been before. And yet with that closer came a greater understanding, a greater degree of control through compromise rather than oppression.
It took several long moments to calm him down, to ease him back from the edge. Violence wasn’t the answer here. It couldn’t be. These people had suffered enough violence to last several lifetimes. What they needed was stability. Safety. Someone to show them that not everyone in a position of power would use it to hurt them.
I could be that someone. It wasn’t a glamorous role, but it was a necessary one.
Once the bear had settled into a low, watchful alertness rather than active aggression, I turned my attention back to the camp.To my people. To the fractures I could see forming in the foundation of what we were trying to build.
Dean was avoiding Damon. I’d noticed it last night and again this morning. I could see it in the way he walked wide circles around where Damon sat, the way his eyes would track toward his brother and then deliberately look away. I understood the instinct. None of us knew if we were looking at Damon or the nightmare at any given moment. It could play us so easily. The only reason we ever found out was because it took so much amusement in breaking the illusion. Or at least, the times it let the illusion fall. There could have been others when it just let us keep believing. But avoidance wasn’t going to solve anything. If anything, it only made things worse.
Maddox was sitting by himself, staring at the marks on his arm. He’d been doing that a lot since we left the battlefield. Tracing the golden patterns with his fingertips, his expression distant and haunted. The Summer Court magic had claimed him as its heir, and he didn’t know what to do with it. Didn’t know how to carry the weight of Rhidian’s legacy along with the guilt of Rhidian’s death.
Ryder was cracking jokes with some of the spring court fighters, his voice carrying across the camp with exaggerated cheerfulness. But I could hear the brittleness underneath. The humor was getting darker, more desperate, the smile never quite reaching his eyes. He was deflecting. Hiding. Using laughter as armour against everything he didn’t want to feel, even as he tried to make all of those around him feel better.
And Alyssa...
Alyssa was holding everyone together through sheer force of will. Moving through the camp, checking on the wounded, speaking quietly with the freed Endless, projecting calm and confidence even though I knew, Iknew, she was cracking apart inside. She was carrying so much.Too much. And she wouldn’tlet any of us help because she thought she had to be strong for everyone else.
At the edges of everything, I could see Fizzle. The little creature was hovering at the periphery of the camp, close enough to watch but far enough to be clearly excluded. Alyssa had shut him out, he knew it, and he didn’t know how to fix it. I could see the anxiety in the way he moved, the guilt in the set of his wings. He was hurting too.
Everyone was hurting. Everyone was broken in their own way. Who was supposed to hold all these pieces together long enough for them to heal?
The bear rumbled at the back of my mind.Why haven’t we killed the nightmare yet?
Because it’s wearing someone they love, I reminded him.
The bear didn’t understand that. To him, threats were threats. You eliminated them. You didn’t negotiate with them or try to save them or chain them up in the hope that somehow, someday, you’d find a solution that didn’t involve teeth and claws.
But I understood. That was my role in this pack. I was here to see the long game when others were stuck in the moment. To hold steady when everything else was chaos. To be the anchor that kept them all from drifting apart.
I’d given up my sleuth for this. For Alyssa, specifically. For the woman I’d known was my mate before I’d had any idea how that was possible. I’d left behind everything I knew, everyone who’d been like family before, because I couldn’t leave her. Couldn’t walk away from the bond that tied us together even when I didn’t understand it.
