17. Esmerelda
ESMERELDA
Tomorrow, he leaves.
The words have been circling through my mind all day, a constant refrain that I can't escape no matter how hard I try to focus on other things. Tomorrow he leaves. Tomorrow he walks into battle. Tomorrow I might lose him.
I've been trying to keep busy, helping Eliza in the kitchen, sitting with Margot while Roman rests, making myself useful in all the small ways I know how.
The compound is alive with preparation, brothers checking weapons and vehicles, supplies being loaded, the grim efficiency of men who know what's coming.
The women move through it all with practiced calm, having done this before, having sent their men into danger and waited for news.
But I haven't done this before. I've never loved someone who walks toward violence instead of away from it. I've never had to say goodbye knowing it might be the last time.
Nothing quiets the terror that's been building in my chest since the war council three days ago, since Stellan told me he'd be on the front line, since I understood what that really means.
The berserker will be unleashed. The beast will take control. And he might not come back from it.
I find him in his room as the sun begins to set, going through his weapons one final time with the methodical attention he brings to everything.
His movements are calm, practiced, the routine of a man who's prepared for battle more times than he can count.
Knives laid out in precise rows. Guns cleaned and loaded.
The leather bracelet on the nightstand, the one his sister made, that he'll leave behind because he won't risk losing it.
But when he looks up and sees me in the doorway, something softens in his expression.
Something that looks like love and fear and the same desperate ache I've been carrying all day.
"Esme."
"Can I come in?"
He sets down the knife he was cleaning and crosses to me, pulling me into his arms without a word.
I go willingly, pressing my face against his chest, breathing in the scent of him, trying to memorize this moment.
The solid weight of his body. The warmth of his skin.
The steady rhythm of his heartbeat against my cheek.
"You don't have to go," I whisper.
The words escape before I can stop them, before I can remind myself of the conversation we had three days ago, of his gentle confrontation, of my promise to try to just be present instead of trying to fix.
He doesn't answer right away. Just holds me, his chin resting on top of my head, his arms wrapped around me like he's trying to memorize this too.
"I do," he finally says.
"They could send someone else. There are other brothers who can fight?—"
"No one else can do what I do." His voice is gentle, patient, like he knows I need to say this even if he can't give me what I'm asking for.
"The berserker isn't just violence, little one.
It's terror. It breaks enemy lines, destroys their morale, turns a battle before it really starts.
Without me on the front line, more of my brothers will die. "
"You could be killed." My voice cracks on the word. "You could walk into that fight and never walk out."
"I could be killed here. In the compound. In bed. On the road." He pulls back slightly to look at my face, his dark eyes filled with a sadness that matches my own. "This is who I am, Esme. A brother. A weapon. A man who fights so that others don't have to."
"But we just found each other. I just—" I stop, swallow, try to find words that aren't just pleas and protests. "I've waited so long to feel this way about someone. And now I might lose you before we've even had a chance to really be together."
"I know." He cups my face in his massive hands, his thumbs brushing away tears I didn't realize I was crying. "And I want to come back to you. More than I've ever wanted anything. But I can't hide while my brothers fight. I can't stay safe while they die for me."
"Stellan—"
"If I stayed behind, I'd never forgive myself. And you'd never be able to look at me the same way." His voice is steady, certain. "You fell in love with the man who protects his family. Who walks into danger so others don't have to. If I abandoned that, I wouldn't be the man you love anymore."
The words hit me somewhere deep, somewhere that recognizes the truth even as I want to deny it.
He's right. I know he's right. I fell in love with his protectiveness, his loyalty, the way he would tear through an army to keep the people he cares about safe.
I can't ask him to be less than that just because I'm scared.
But knowing he's right doesn't make it easier.
"I'm doing it again," I say quietly, the realization settling over me like a weight. "Aren't I?"
"Yes."
"I don't know how to stop." The admission feels like failure, like all the progress I thought I'd made was an illusion.
"I hear myself pleading, trying to protect you, trying to keep you from danger, and I know it's the same pattern.
The same need to fix, to control, to make things safe. But I can't seem to help it."
"You're scared." He pulls me close again, his voice warm against my hair. "It's okay to be scared. I'm scared too."
"You are?"
"Terrified." The word comes out rough, cracked.
"I've walked into a hundred battles and never cared whether I came back.
But now I have you, and the thought of leaving you, of never seeing your face again, of dying in some field while you wait for me—" He shudders. "It's the most afraid I've ever been."
Something shifts in my chest. The fear doesn't disappear, but it transforms into something different.
Shared. Understood. He's not dismissing my terror or telling me it's irrational.
He's carrying the same weight I am, walking toward battle with the same desperate wish that things could be different.
"But you have to let me be who I am," he continues. "That includes this. The fighting. The danger. The beast that I am when there's no other choice. I can't be half of what I am and still be me."
"I know. I just—" I take a breath, trying to find the words that will explain this feeling, this crushing helplessness.
"I've spent my whole life taking care of people.
Fixing things. Making sure everyone around me is safe and healthy and okay.
It's who I am. It's what I'm good at. And now I can't fix this.
I can't make you safe. I can't control what happens when you walk out that door tomorrow. And I feel useless."
"You're not useless." He tilts my face up to meet his eyes, and there's something fierce in his expression, something that burns with conviction.
"You're my anchor. When I'm in the dark, in the red, when the beast has taken over and I can't remember my own name, I'll think of you.
Your voice. Your touch. The way the world goes quiet when you're near. "
"Will that be enough?"
"It was before. When you reached for me during the attack.
" He presses his forehead to mine, and I can feel the warmth of his breath on my lips.
"I was lost, completely lost, drowning in the red, and then I heard your voice and felt your hand on my arm.
Something in me remembered how to be human.
You brought me back, Esme. You're the only one who ever has.
Not Kieran, not any technique, not fifteen years of trying to control this thing. Just you."
I close my eyes, letting his words sink in. Anchor. Not fixer, not protector, not someone who has to do something to be valuable. Just an anchor. A presence. A reason to come home.
"Promise me you'll try to come back," I whisper. "I know you can't guarantee it. I know the battle could go wrong, could be worse than anyone expects. But promise me you'll try."
"I'll try. That's all I can give." He kisses my forehead, soft and reverent. "But I swear to you, I'm going to fight harder than I've ever fought to make it back to this room. To your arms. To the life we're building together."
"Even if the beast takes over?"
"Especially then. Because somewhere in the red, somewhere in the chaos, there's a part of me that remembers you. That's new, Esme. Fifteen years, and I've never had that before. A thread that connects me to something beyond the violence."
I don't argue anymore. Don't plead or protest or try to fix.
I just hold him, my arms wrapped around his waist, my face pressed against his chest, memorizing everything I can about this moment.
The sound of his breathing. The feel of his heart beating against my cheek.
The warmth of his body surrounding me like a shield.
"I love you," I say, and the words feel inadequate, too small to contain everything I'm feeling. "Whatever happens tomorrow, whatever comes after, I love you. I'll love you whether you come back whole or broken or not at all."
"Don't say that." His voice is rough. "I'm coming back."
"I know. But I need you to know anyway. That my love isn't conditional on you being safe, on you coming home unscathed. I love the man who walks into battle. I love the beast that protects his family. I love all of you, Stellan, even the parts that scare us both."
He makes a sound that might be a sob, quickly contained, and his arms tighten around me until I can barely breathe. But I don't pull away. I hold on just as tight, giving him permission to take what he needs, to feel what he needs to feel before he has to become the weapon again.
"Come back to me," I whisper against his chest. "Please. Whatever you have to do, whatever the beast becomes, come back."
"Always." The word is a vow, a promise, a prayer. "I'll always come back to you."
We stand there as the last light fades from the window, as the compound settles into the tense quiet of the night before battle.
Somewhere outside, brothers are making their own goodbyes, holding their own old ladies, preparing for what might be their last dawn.
The women I've come to love are sitting with men who might not survive tomorrow.
This is the life I've chosen. The world I've walked into.
It's terrifying and violent and nothing like the safe, comfortable existence I had before.
But it's also real in a way nothing else has ever been.
The love here is fierce, uncompromising, forged in fire and blood and the constant shadow of death.
"Stay with me tonight," Stellan says, his voice low. "Not for anything except being together. I just want to hold you."
"I was going to demand the same thing."
He almost smiles, that small, rusty expression that I've learned to treasure. "Great minds."
We don't talk much after that. We climb into his narrow bed, tangled together in the darkness, and we let ourselves just be. Present. Together. Two people clinging to each other before the storm.
I don't sleep much. Neither does he. Every time I start to drift off, the fear surges back, and I open my eyes to make sure he's still there, still real, still breathing beside me. Each time, his arms tighten around me, letting me know he felt me wake, letting me know he's not going anywhere.
Not yet.
But morning comes, the way it always does, relentless and unstoppable. The first gray light filters through the window, and I feel Stellan stir beside me, feel him begin to pull away.
"Don't," I whisper, holding on tighter. "Not yet. Just a few more minutes."
He settles back down, his lips pressing against my hair. "A few more minutes."
We take them. Every second we can steal from the day that's coming. Every moment of warmth and closeness before duty tears us apart. And when he finally does have to leave, when duty and brotherhood and the weight of what he is pull him out of my arms, I let him go.
It's the hardest thing I've ever done. Watching him dress in the darkness, his movements efficient and practiced.
Watching him gather his weapons, sliding knives into sheaths, checking ammunition one final time.
Watching him pause at the door and look back at me with eyes that hold everything he can't say, all the fear and love and desperate hope that mirrors my own.
I want to run to him. Want to grab his arm and beg him not to go. Want to be the kind of woman who throws herself in front of danger to protect the man she loves. But that's not what he needs from me. What he needs is for me to be strong. To trust him. To let him be the warrior he is.
"I'll be waiting," I tell him, my voice steady even though my hands are shaking. "Right here. However long it takes."
"I know." He crosses back to me, cups my face one last time, kisses me with a tenderness that breaks my heart and mends it all at once. "I love you, little one. Hold onto that. Whatever happens, whatever you hear, hold onto that."
"Always."
And then he's gone, the door closing behind him, his footsteps fading down the hallway toward the brothers who are gathering for war. I'm alone with the silence and the fear and the desperate, aching hope that he'll keep his promise.
That he'll come back to me.
That love will be enough to bring him home.