4. Stellan #2
"Yes." I swallow hard, my throat tight as I try to find the right words to explain something I don't fully understand myself. "I don't understand it. I don't know why it responds to her this way."
"Maybe there's nothing to understand." His voice is calm, measured, carrying that steadiness that's kept the Council running through countless crises. "Maybe she's just good for you. Maybe it's as simple as that."
"Or maybe it's waiting." The fear I've been carrying for days spills out before I can stop it, bitter and sharp on my tongue. "Building up to something worse. Recognizing something it wants to destroy, biding its time until the moment is right."
"Is that what you think?" he asks quietly, and there's no judgment in the question, only genuine curiosity.
"I don't know what I think." I press my palm against the cold glass of the window, anchoring myself.
"The beast doesn't go quiet for anyone. It never has.
For fifteen years, I've fought to keep it contained, and now this woman shows up with her coffee and her patience and suddenly it's calm?
That can't be right. It has to mean something dangerous. "
Kieran falls quiet for a long moment, and I watch his reflection in the darkened window glass, studying the way the shadows play across his weathered features.
His expression is thoughtful, contemplative, maybe even a little sad—the kind of sadness that comes from witnessing too many tragedies, too many lives lost to the very curse I'm fighting.
"Fifteen years," he says finally, his voice heavy with the weight of all those accumulated memories. "I've watched you fight the beast for fifteen years, watched you struggle and claw your way back from the edge more times than I can count. I've never seen it go quiet for anyone. Not once."
"Exactly. It's not normal." My reflection in the glass looks haggard, desperate. "Nothing about this is normal."
"No, it's not." He turns to face me fully, his broad shoulders blocking out the light from behind him, and there's something in his eyes that I can't quite read—something that looks almost like hope, which somehow frightens me more than certainty would.
"But maybe normal isn't what you need. Maybe what you need is something different, something unprecedented.
Something that makes the monster settle instead of rage, that gives it peace instead of feeding its hunger. "
"And what if I hurt her?" The question tears out of me, raw and terrified, stripping away whatever composure I'd managed to maintain. "What if the beast wakes up one day and she's standing too close, right there in the line of fire? What if I?—"
"What if you don't?"
The question stops me cold, cutting through my spiral of catastrophic thinking. I stare at him, uncomprehending, and he meets my gaze with the steady certainty that's made him the President this club needs, the leader who guides us through the darkness.
"What if," Kieran continues, "you spend so long waiting for the disaster that you miss the grace? What if the beast goes quiet around her because she's exactly what it's been looking for? Not a threat to be destroyed, but something worth protecting. Something worth being human for."
"That's not how it works."
"Isn't it?" He takes a step closer, his voice dropping.
"I've seen the morveth take many forms over the years.
I've seen berserkers consumed by it, lost to it, put down because they couldn't find their way back.
But I've also seen orcs who found their anchors, who learned to live with the beast instead of fighting it.
The common thread? Someone who makes them want to stay human. "
"Esmerelda shouldn't have to be anyone's anchor."
"No, she shouldn't have to be." Kieran's expression softens. "But what if she wants to? What if she's choosing you the same way you're choosing her?"
"I'm not choosing anything."
"Aren't you?" A ghost of a smile crosses his face. "You stand by the door every morning waiting for her to bring you coffee. You count the seconds between her laughs. You watch her when you think no one's looking, and your whole body changes when she's near. That looks like a choice to me."
I want to argue, but I can't. He's right. Every word he's saying is right, and I hate that he can see it so clearly when I've been trying so hard to hide.
"What do I do?" The question comes out barely more than a whisper.
"That's not for me to answer." Kieran puts his hand on my shoulder, a rare gesture of physical connection.
"But I'll tell you what I told Barrett when he was tying himself in knots over Kira: sometimes the most dangerous thing isn't letting someone in.
Sometimes it's keeping them out and losing the chance to find out what you could have been together. "
He squeezes my shoulder once and then releases me, stepping back toward the shadows of the hallway.
"Get some rest, brother. Tomorrow's another day."
I watch him go, this man who's carried me through fifteen years of darkness, and I think about what he said. Something worth being human for. An anchor. A choice.
When I close my eyes, I see Esmerelda's face, patient and kind, waiting for me to find the words for things I've never been able to say. The beast stirs in my chest, and for the first time, it doesn't feel like a warning.
It feels like recognition.
Maybe Kieran is right. Maybe she's not something the beast wants to destroy. Maybe she's something it wants to keep.
The question is whether I'm brave enough to find out.