16. Stellan
STELLAN
The war council begins at noon.
We gather in the makeshift command center, a room that used to be storage but now serves as the heart of our strategic operations.
Maps cover every wall, marked with red pins for Bloodtusk positions and blue for our own.
Intelligence reports are stacked on the side tables, the product of two weeks of interrogations and surveillance.
Barrett stands at the main table, his silver eyes cold and calculating as he lays out the intelligence we've gathered.
Roman is beside him, still moving carefully from his injuries but present, unwilling to be sidelined when his club is planning war.
Kieran presides from the head of the table, his expression carved from stone.
Whatever darkness lives inside him, whatever history he shares with Dragan, it's closer to the surface now than I've ever seen it.
He looks like a man who's been waiting fifteen years for something, and that something is finally within reach.
The burden of command sits heavy on his shoulders, but underneath it, I can see the anticipation. The hunger for resolution.
"We hit them back," Barrett says, pointing to a cluster of red pins in the foothills northeast of Redstone. "Major strike. Bloodtusk stronghold. Their primary base of operations."
"When?" Elias asks.
"Three days. That gives us time to finalize positions, gather supplies, and coordinate with our allies.
" Barrett's gaze sweeps the room, meeting each brother's eyes in turn.
"This isn't a raid. This is a full assault.
Everyone who can fight goes. Everyone who can't stays here to protect the compound. "
The weight of his words settles over the room.
This is it. The battle that will end the war one way or another.
Either we destroy Bloodtusk's leadership and break their power, or they destroy us.
I can feel the tension in the brothers around me, the mixture of fear and determination that precedes any major operation.
We've all seen combat. We've all lost brothers. We know what's coming.
"The berserker," Kieran says, and the room goes quiet. Everyone knows what that means. Everyone knows what I am. "You'll be frontline. The first wave. Where the chaos is worst."
I nod. This is what I'm for. This is what the beast is for.
Not protection, not guard duty, but the kind of violence that breaks enemy lines and terrorizes anyone who stands against us.
The brothers who will fight alongside me know to give me space once the morveth takes hold.
They know that in the red haze of the berserker, I can't distinguish friend from foe, that proximity to me during an episode is a death sentence.
"I'll be ready."
"I know you will." Kieran's gaze holds mine for a moment, and I see something there, some acknowledgment of what I'll become when the fighting starts. Something that might even be understanding. "Just remember you have something to come back to now."
The meeting continues, tactics and positions and supply lines, but my mind keeps drifting to Esmerelda.
She's somewhere in the compound, probably helping in the kitchen or sitting with the other women, unaware that in three days I'll be walking into a battle that could kill me.
Unaware that the beast she's learned to accept will be unleashed in ways I can't fully control.
I should tell her. I should prepare her for the possibility that I might not come back.
But when I think about the look that will cross her face, the fear and the grief and the desperate need to do something, I find myself hesitating. She's already struggling with something, some internal battle I can see in her eyes even when she tries to hide it. I don't want to add to that weight.
The council ends, assignments distributed, three days of preparation stretching out before us.
I leave the command center with the other brothers, but I don't go to find Esmerelda.
Not yet. I need time to figure out what to say, how to tell her that the man she's falling for is about to become the monster she's been learning to accept.
She finds me before I find her.
I'm in my room, going through my weapons, checking blades and cleaning guns with the methodical attention that combat requires. The door opens without a knock, which is how I know it's her. She's the only one who enters without asking, the only one the beast doesn't bristle at.
But when I look up, I see something in her expression that makes me pause. Determination. Nervousness. The kind of careful hope that usually precedes something she's not sure I'll accept.
"I've been reading," she says, and she's holding a stack of papers, printed from somewhere, covered in handwritten notes. "About berserker rage. About trauma responses and grounding techniques."
The papers are thick with text, highlighted passages and underlined phrases, the evidence of hours of research. She's been working on this for days, I realize. Building toward this moment.
"There are techniques," she continues, stepping closer, her voice earnest and hopeful. "Anchoring methods. Breathing exercises. I could help you practice, help you develop better control. Some of this has been used with veterans who experience rage episodes, and the success rates are?—"
"Esme."
She keeps going, the words tumbling out faster now. "It might help you stay in control longer, or come back faster when you do lose it. I've made a list of specific exercises we could try, and there's this cognitive reframing technique that?—"
"Esme. Stop."
She freezes, the papers clutched in her hands, her eyes searching my face. I can see the hurt already building there, the fear that she's done something wrong, and I feel something twist in my chest.
"You're doing it again," I say, keeping my voice gentle. "Trying to fix me."
"I'm trying to help?—"
"By turning me into a project." I set down the gun I was cleaning and stand, crossing to her, taking her hands in mine. The papers crinkle between us, all that research, all that effort. "I know this is how you love, little one. By making things better. By solving problems. By being useful."
Her breath catches, and I see the moment when my words land somewhere deep.
"But this isn't something you can fix with techniques," I continue.
"The morveth isn't a trauma response that can be reframed.
It's not PTSD that can be managed with breathing exercises.
It's part of what I am, written into my blood, and I've spent fifteen years learning to live with it.
Learning to control it, to contain it, to keep it from destroying everything I touch. "
I gesture at the papers between us, all that careful research.
"I know you put hours into this. I know you did it because you care, because you want to help.
And that means more to me than I can say.
" I take both her hands in mine, the papers falling to the floor.
"But Kieran has tried techniques. The club doctor has tried techniques.
I've tried every meditation and grounding exercise anyone could think of.
None of it works when the beast decides to rise.
The only thing that's ever worked is having someone I trust enough to anchor me back. "
"There has to be something?—"
"There is." I cup her face, tilting it up to meet my eyes.
"You. You're what helps. Your voice. Your touch.
The way the beast goes quiet when you're near.
That's not a technique you researched. That's just you, Esmerelda.
Just you being present, being here, being willing to reach for me when everyone else would run. "
Her eyes are swimming now, tears she's trying to hold back. The vulnerability in her expression cuts me deeper than any blade could. She wanted so badly to be useful, to contribute something concrete, and I'm telling her that the most useful thing she can do is simply exist.
"I just wanted to do something," she whispers. "You're going into battle in three days, and I can't fight, I can't protect you, and I thought if I could just find a way to help?—"
"You already did it." I brush a tear from her cheek with my thumb. "You reached for me when everyone else would have run. You stayed when I told you to go. You saw the monster and you didn't flinch. You loved me when I was covered in blood and couldn't remember my own name."
"That's not enough."
"It's everything." I hold her gaze, letting her see the truth in my eyes. "I don't need you to fix me, Esmerelda. I need you to love me. Just as I am. Beast and all."
The silence stretches between us, heavy with implication. We've been dancing around this word for days, implied it, suggested it, felt it in every touch and look. But neither of us has said it outright.
"I do love you," she whispers. "That's why I can't just sit here and watch you go into danger without doing something."
The words hit me like a physical blow. I do love you. Said out loud, spoken into the space between us, making it real.
"I love you too." My voice comes out rough, cracked with emotion I don't know how to contain. "I've loved you since the first time you brought me coffee and didn't flinch when I looked at you. Maybe longer. Maybe since the first time I saw you across a room and the beast went quiet."
She makes a sound that's half laugh, half sob, and throws her arms around me, burying her face in my chest. I hold her, this small, fierce, impossibly stubborn woman who's decided to love a monster, and I let myself feel the weight of what we've just admitted.
"Then that's enough," I say into her hair. "Loving each other. Being here. That's enough."
She's quiet for a long moment, her breathing uneven against my chest. When she finally speaks, her voice is small, vulnerable in a way I've rarely heard from her.
"I don't know how to just... be. Without helping. Without fixing. Without earning my place."
"Learn." I pull back slightly to look at her face, streaked with tears but still beautiful. "Because I need you to be here. Not to fix me, not to solve me, not to turn me into a project. Just to be here. Can you do that?"
"I can try."
"That's all I ask."
She laughs, watery and raw. "You make it sound so simple."
"It's not. I know it's not." I take her hand, pressing it over my heart. "I've spent fifteen years learning to live with the beast. You've spent your whole life learning to be useful. Neither of us knows how to just... be. But maybe we can learn together."
"Together." She tests the word like she's trying it on. "I like that."
"Me too."
I pull her back into my arms, holding her close, and we stand there in the quiet of my room while the afternoon light fades. The papers she brought are scattered on the floor now, all that research, all that effort to fix something that doesn't need fixing. Just love.
"Three days," she says quietly, her voice barely above a whisper as reality settles around us.
"Three days. Then the assault." The words taste bitter on my tongue, a countdown I wish I could stop.
"And you'll be on the front line. With the beast." Her fingers tighten against my shirt, betraying the fear she's trying to keep from her voice.
"That's where I'm needed." Where I've always been needed, where the monster inside me finally has purpose.
She doesn't argue. Doesn't try to talk me out of it, doesn't offer alternative solutions or strategic adjustments or ways to keep me safe from what's coming.
Just holds on tighter, her arms wrapped around my waist like she's trying to memorize the feel of me, the solid weight of my body against hers, the rhythm of my breathing.
"Come back," she says, and there's a rawness in those two words that makes my chest ache. "Whatever happens, whatever you have to do, whatever the beast makes you become out there—come back to me."
"I will." I mean it with every fiber of my being.
"Promise me." Her voice breaks slightly, vulnerability bleeding through.
"I promise." I press a kiss to the top of her head, breathing in the scent of her hair, committing it to memory. "I have something to come back to now. Someone who loves me not despite what I am, but with full knowledge of it. I'm not going to waste that."
We stay like that until the dinner bell rings, until the world outside my room demands our attention again. But before we leave, before we rejoin the others and pretend that everything is normal, I take her face in my hands one more time.
"I love you," I say, because I want to say it again, want to get used to the feel of the words in my mouth. "I love you, and you don't have to earn it. You don't have to fix me or help me or be useful. You just have to be you."
"I love you too." She smiles, still watery but genuine. "And I'll try. I'll try to just be. To trust that being here is enough."
"It is. It always has been."
We walk to dinner hand in hand, and the brothers we pass give us knowing looks, small nods of acknowledgment.
They can see what's between us now, can see that something has shifted in the past few hours.
Harlan grins and claps me on the shoulder.
Elias raises an eyebrow and mouths "finally" with exaggerated relief.
Even the prospects duck their heads with grins they're trying to hide.
Even Barrett, standing in the doorway of the mess hall with Kira, gives me a look that might almost be approving.
The VP doesn't soften often, but there's something in his silver eyes that suggests he understands.
He found his own anchor in Kira. He knows what it means to have someone worth fighting for.
"Three days," Esmerelda murmurs as we enter the crowded room. "We have three days."
"Then let's not waste them."
She squeezes my hand, and the beast purrs with contentment.
Three days. Then war. Then whatever comes after.
But right now, in this moment, I have her. And that's enough. That's everything.