(Rhydian)
I’m back there.
The courtyard. The wooden platform. The rope.
My mother is crying. My father stares at the sky like he checked out before they even put the rope on. The elders stand in their half-circle with stone faces, and the whole Pack watches from behind the enforcers like it’s sothing to see.
I’m sixteen. I’m screaming. It takes three grown wolves to hold back from running to them.
*"Please. Please don’t. They’re sorry — I’m sorry — please—"*
Nobody listens.
The trapdoor opens.
They fall.
The ropes go tight.
I wake up gasping so hard I nearly choke on the air. Cold sweat soaking through the sheets, heart slamming my ribs, hands clawing at the mattress looking for sothing to grab, sothing to fight—
But I’m not in the courtyard. Stone walls. A fire burned down to coals. A soft bed that still doesn’t feel like mine.
And soone is holding .
Arms around my chest, a body warm against my back, breath slow and steady on my neck.
Elena.
I don’t rember her climbing in. Must have been so deep in it I didn’t feel her.
"Shh." Her voice is rough from sleep. "You’re safe. You’re here. Not there."
The nightmare is still crawling under my skin. I can still hear—
*I can still hear it.*
"I’ve got you," she murmurs, and her hand presses flat against my chest, right over where my heart is going absolutely haywire.
"Let go," I choke out.
"No."
"I said let go—"
I thrash. Hard. My elbow catches sothing and I hear her grunt, but she doesn’t release , so I shove. Both arms, everything I have. I roll off the bed and get my back against the wall before I even know I’m moving.
---
(Elena)
One second I’m holding him, feeling his heart race under my palm, and the next I’m flat on my back and he’s across the bed pressed into the corner like sothing cornered.
Chest heaving. Eyes wild — gold shot through with sothing broken and red.
"Don’t touch ." His lips pull back. His hands are shaking.
I sit up slow. Keep my palms visible, facing out.
"Rhydian."
"Stay away from ."
"You were having a nightmare. I heard you."
"I don’t—" He stops. Swallows. "I don’t cry."
"You were calling for your mother."
His face crumples. Just for a second — there and gone, smoothed back behind the mask so fast I’d almost think I imagined it.
"Get out," he says.
"This is my room."
"Then I’ll leave." He tries to stand. His legs don’t hold him and he drops back onto the mattress, and I have to look away for a second to give him that.
"You’re having a panic attack," I say. "Rember what I showed you? Breathe. In through your nose."
"I don’t need your lessons right now—"
"This isn’t a lesson. This is just staying alive."
He glares at . But he breathes. Shallow and ragged, but he does it.
"Again. Deep."
He pulls in a long breath. His shoulders shake with it.
"Out through your mouth."
The exhale cos out wet.
"Good. Again."
We do this for a full minute. His hands stop shaking first, then his breathing evens, and the wildness in his eyes fades into sothing underneath.
Grief. Open, raw, nowhere to hide it.
---
(Rhydian)
I hate that she’s seeing like this.
I hate that she stayed.
I hate that I can still feel her arms around like I actually mattered to soone.
Nobody’s held since I was sixteen. Four years of waking up alone in the dark, bleeding alone, fighting alone, crawling back to that cave alone every single ti.
And this woman — this stranger who slapped and bandaged in the sa hour — held while I scread.
"Why are you still here?" I ask. My voice doesn’t co out right.
"Because you’re my responsibility."
"That’s not an answer."
She’s quiet for a mont. The fire pops.
"Honest answer?" she says.
"I don’t know."
"I know what it’s like to wake up from a nightmare alone. Viktor never held . When I cried in the night he told I was disturbing his sleep."
I stare at her.
"Three years," she says quietly. "Not once."
"That’s..." I don’t have the word for it.
"Yes. It was."
"So you held because you wished soone had held you?"
"I held you because nobody should go through that alone. Not even a rogue who bites people on the first day."
Sothing in my chest does a thing I don’t have a na for.
"I saw them die," I hear myself say.
The words just fall out. I didn’t decide to say them.
Elena doesn’t speak. She just watches , and sohow that’s the right thing.
"The trapdoor. My mother scread. My father didn’t make a sound — he just went, like he’d already decided it was fine. And I was screaming so loud I couldn’t hear anything else by the end."
"You were a child."
"I was sixteen. Old enough to fight."
"You couldn’t have saved them."
"I know that." My hands drop into my lap. "I know what they did. Selling Pack secrets to Shadowpine — I know it was wrong. I know they deserved what they got." My throat closes around the next part. "But they were still mine. Even if they were monsters. They were still my parents."
---
(Elena)
His voice breaks on that last word.
Mine.
I know that word. Loving soone who doesn’t deserve it. Viktor was cold and absent and when he died I still cried — not because I loved him, but because the loneliness that ca after was so much louder than the loneliness before.
Rhydian has been alone in a way I never was. Not even close.
He’s sitting in the corner of my bed shirtless and bandaged and trembling, eyes wet, fighting the tears with every muscle in his jaw.
"Let it out," I say.
"No."
"Rhydian—"
"I haven’t cried since the day they died." His voice is ragged. "I’m not starting now."
I move toward him. Slow, one careful inch at a ti, watching his face. He sees coming and doesn’t tell to stop.
When I’m close enough I just open my arms.
"Can I hold you?"
"No."
I wait.
"Why do you even want to?" he asks.
"Because you need it."
"That’s not a real reason."
"It’s the only one that matters."
---
**Rhydian**
She’s looking at like I’m not what everyone’s called for four years.
Not a brat. Not a rogue. Not a traitor’s son.
Just soone who’s hurting.
I don’t know what to do with that. I’ve been hard and an and sharp for so long — it kept alive, it kept people at a distance, and that was fine because distance was safe.
But I’m so tired.
Tired of the cave. Tired of the cold. Tired of waking up from that courtyard with nobody there.
I nod. Barely. Just a small movent of my head.
She doesn’t grab at . She just shifts closer and opens her arms and waits, and I lean into her like sothing finally giving way.
---
(Elena)
He falls against like a tree coming down.
Face pressed into my shoulder, arms still at his sides, not hugging back — just collapsed, like he used up everything he had just getting here.
I wrap around him. One hand on his back, one cradling the back of his head. His hair is soft. His skin is fever-warm.
The first sob is almost silent — just his shoulders hitching once. Then again. Then it breaks open and he’s really crying, ugly and gasping and shaking all the way through, face buried in my neck, tears hot against my skin.
His hands co up finally and grab fistfuls of my nightgown and hold on.
I pull him closer.
"There you go," I whisper. "I’m not going anywhere."
We stay like that a long ti. Him crying, holding, the fire crackling low. The moon moves past the window.
Eventually the sobs slow. His grip loosens. His breathing finds a rhythm.
He doesn’t pull away.
"Elena," he mumbles into my neck.
"Hmm."
"Thank you."
I press my lips to the top of his head. Light, quick, almost without thinking.
"Sleep," I say. "I’m right here."
He doesn’t argue. His body goes heavy against mine, and within minutes his breathing deepens and evens out completely.
I keep holding him anyway.
---
(Rhydian)
For the first ti in four years, I fall asleep without fighting it.
And when I dream, there are no ropes. No trapdoors. No courtyard.
Just grey eyes. Warm hands. And the specific quiet of not being alone.
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