19. Esmerelda
ESMERELDA
Ihaven't slept.
The whole night has been a blur of pacing and praying and staring at the compound gates like I can will them to open through sheer force of desperation.
The other women are here too, scattered around the common room in various states of anxious exhaustion.
Kira sits rigid in a chair by the window, her eyes fixed on the road, her phone clutched in her hand like a lifeline.
Margot holds Roman's hand, both of them awake despite the doctor's orders for him to rest. His recovery has been slow, and he wanted to go with his brothers, but his body isn't ready.
Now he sits here like the rest of us, waiting for news that doesn't come.
Camille sharpens her knife with the same methodical precision she always uses, but her movements are jerky, uneven.
The rasp of metal against stone fills the silence every few seconds, a rhythm that should be comforting but just underscores how long we've been waiting.
Eliza stopped baking hours ago, the kitchen silent for the first time since the lockdown began.
Even June is here, sitting apart from the rest of us, her expression unreadable as she watches the door.
We're all waiting. We're all terrified.
Every few minutes, someone checks their phone, hoping for news that doesn't come.
The radio is tuned to the secure channel, but all we've heard is static and occasional bursts of coded communication that none of us can decipher.
The battle was supposed to be over hours ago. They should have been back by now.
Unless they're not coming back.
I push the thought away, but it keeps returning, a dark whisper that grows louder with every passing minute. The assault went wrong. That's what the last fragmentary report suggested before the communications cut out. An ambush. Heavy casualties. Bloodtusk was waiting for them. And then nothing.
Nothing for hours.
I close my eyes and try to remember Stellan's face this morning, the way he looked at me before he left. The tenderness in his eyes despite the fear we both felt. The fierce certainty in his voice when he promised to come back. He promised. He wouldn't break that promise.
But the beast doesn't make promises. The beast doesn't care about coming home.
The first light of dawn is creeping over the horizon when I hear it: the distant rumble of engines. Multiple vehicles, approaching fast. I'm on my feet before I've consciously decided to move, running toward the gates with the other women close behind.
The convoy that enters the compound is smaller than the one that left.
Much smaller. I count the vehicles through blurred vision, trying to calculate how many brothers are missing, how many didn't make it.
The trucks are battered, bullet-riddled, some of them barely holding together.
Men are already jumping out, some running to assist others, some carrying stretchers, some just standing there with the hollow eyes of survivors who can't quite believe they're alive.
I scan every face, searching for the one I need to see.
And then I find him.
Two brothers are half-carrying Stellan across the compound, his arms draped over their shoulders, his head hanging low.
He's covered in blood, more blood than I've ever seen on a person who was still breathing.
His shirt is torn, revealing bandages wrapped hastily around his torso, already soaked through with crimson.
His face is pale beneath the gore, and his eyes, when they finally lift to meet mine, are hollow.
Empty.
Like nothing lives behind them anymore, like whatever spark makes him him has been extinguished, leaving only a shell that moves and breathes but doesn't truly exist.
"Stellan!" I run to him, my boots pounding against the dusty ground, reaching for his face with trembling hands, needing to touch him, needing to feel the warmth of his skin, needing to know he's real and alive and here and not some phantom my desperate mind has conjured. "You're back. Thank God, you're?—"
"Don't." His voice is barely a rasp, rough and broken as if he's been screaming for hours, but the single word stops me cold, freezing me in place as effectively as if he'd physically pushed me away. "Don't touch me."
I freeze mid-reach, my hands still raised and outstretched, fingers curled slightly, hovering just inches from his bloodied face, so close I can feel the heat radiating from his fevered skin. "You're hurt. You're bleeding. Let me help?—"
"I'm dangerous." He pulls away from the brothers supporting him, staggering, nearly falling. His eyes are still hollow, still empty, but there's something else there now. Fear. Not of anything external. Of himself. "I was gone. Completely gone. Lost in the red. I don't know how I came back."
"But you did come back. You're here. You're?—"
"This time." The words cut through my relief like a blade. "I came back this time. But I almost didn't. I was killing, and I couldn't stop, and I didn't want to stop. I wanted the whole world to burn."
The brothers who were helping him have stepped back, giving us space.
Around us, the compound is alive with activity, wounded being carried to the medical bay, reports being exchanged, the chaos of returning from battle.
But I can barely register any of it. All I can see is Stellan, standing in front of me, covered in blood, telling me he almost didn't come back.
"I can't do this," he says, and each word sounds like it's being torn out of him. "Be with you. Knowing what I am. What I became out there."
"You don't get to decide that."
"I'm protecting you?—"
"You're running." The words come out sharper than I intend, fueled by fear and exhaustion and the desperate need to reach him. "You're scared, and you're pushing me away because it's easier than letting me love you."
"You don't understand." His voice breaks, and for a moment I see the man behind the hollow eyes, the man who held me two nights ago and whispered promises against my skin.
"I killed so many people. I tore them apart with my hands.
And I don't remember any of it. I was a passenger in my own body while the beast destroyed everything in front of me. "
"That's what you do. That's what the berserker is. You've told me?—"
"This was different." He shakes his head, and the movement makes him sway.
He's still bleeding, I realize. Still wounded.
He should be in the medical bay, not standing here trying to push me away.
"This was worse than anything before. I was so deep in the red that I couldn't hear anything.
Couldn't feel anything. I was gone, Esme.
Completely gone. And the only thing that brought me back was the memory of your voice. "
"Then it worked. I'm your anchor. That's what we?—"
"And what happens when that's not enough?" His eyes meet mine, and the despair in them makes my heart crack. "What happens when the beast goes so deep that even your voice can't reach me? What happens when I turn on my brothers, or on you, and there's no coming back from it?"
I don't have an answer for that. I don't know how to promise him something I can't guarantee. All I know is that I love him, and he's standing in front of me trying to destroy something beautiful because he's convinced he'll ruin it anyway.
"Go," he says, his voice flat. "Find someone who isn't a monster. Someone who can love you without the risk of tearing you apart."
The words land like blows. I can feel myself breaking, feel the despair rising up to swallow me whole. He won't look at me. Won't let me touch him. Won't let me help. After everything we've shared, everything we've built, he's standing in front of me telling me to leave.
I'm useless. The thought surfaces, familiar and devastating. I can't fix this. I can't even touch him. What good am I?
All my life, I've been the helper. The fixer.
The one who reaches for people in pain and finds a way to make things better.
It's who I am. It's what I do. But standing here, watching the man I love destroy himself with guilt and self-loathing, I don't know how to help.
I don't have techniques or strategies or solutions.
I just have love, and right now, that doesn't feel like enough.
The despair presses down on me, heavier than anything I've ever felt. He's made his choice. He's pushing me away. I should leave. I should let him go, find someone else, stop trying to love a man who doesn't think he deserves it.
The voice in my head sounds so reasonable. So logical. You can't save everyone, Esme. You can't love someone into accepting themselves. Some battles aren't yours to fight.
But—
I think of Kira's words, from what feels like a lifetime ago. You fix things. It's beautiful and exhausting. Just make sure you're helping him, not yourself.
Maybe I can't fix this. Maybe I was never supposed to fix this. Maybe trying to fix him was always about my own need to feel useful, to prove I deserved love by earning it.
But I can refuse to leave.
Not because I can help. Not because I can fix anything. But because I love him, and he needs to know that my love doesn't come with conditions.
"You're right," I say.
His head snaps up, surprise breaking through the hollow emptiness.
"I can't fix you." I take a step closer, and he takes a step back, but I keep coming. "I was never going to be able to fix you. The berserker isn't something I can heal with techniques or breathing exercises or love. It's part of who you are, and it's always going to be dangerous."
"Then you understand why?—"
"I understand that you're scared." Another step closer.
He's backed up against a wall now, nowhere to go, and I can see the panic in his eyes mixed with something else.
Something that looks like hope, quickly suppressed.
"I understand that you almost didn't come back, and that terrifies you. It terrifies me too."
"Esme—"
"But I didn't fall in love with you because I thought I could fix you.
" I stop, an arm's length away, and I let him see everything I'm feeling.
The fear and the love and the absolute, stubborn refusal to give up.
"I fell in love with you because you count to seven to remember your sister.
Because you growl at brothers who get too close to me.
Because you held me like I was precious and kissed me like I was sacred.
I fell in love with the man, Stellan. All of him. Including the beast."
"You should go?—"
"I'M NOT GOING." My voice breaks, tears streaming down my face, but I don't care.
I don't care about dignity or composure or any of the things I usually cling to.
"I'm not useless here. I'm not here because I can help or fix or solve anything.
I'm here because I love you. And that's enough. It has to be enough."
He stares at me, the broken man and the woman who refuses to leave, and I watch the war play out behind his eyes.
The part of him that wants to push me away fighting against the part of him that needs me to stay.
The self-loathing battling against the desperate, fragile hope that maybe, just maybe, he doesn't have to be alone.
"I don't know how to let you in," he whispers. "I don't know how to stop being afraid."
"Then learn. With me." I reach for him, slowly this time, giving him the chance to pull away.
He doesn't. My hand touches his face, bloody and bruised and the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
"We learn together. One day at a time. One moment at a time.
I'll be here when the beast is quiet and when it roars.
I'll be here when you come back from the darkness and when you're afraid you won't. I'm not going anywhere, Stellan. "
"Why?" The question comes out broken, shattered. "Why would you stay with a monster?"
"Because you're not a monster." I cup his face in both hands, forcing him to look at me. "You're a man who carries something terrible, and you've spent fifteen years trying to bear it alone. But you don't have to be alone anymore. I'm here. I choose to be here. Let me."
He breaks.
The sob that tears out of him is raw, primal, the sound of walls crumbling that have stood for fifteen years. His massive body shudders, and then he's reaching for me, pulling me against his chest, holding on like I'm the only solid thing in a world that's dissolving around him.
I hold him back. Blood and dirt and all. I wrap my arms around him and I don't let go, even when his weight becomes almost too much to bear, even when my knees start to buckle. He's shaking, crying, making sounds that don't have words but don't need them.
I've got him.
I've got him.
Around us, the compound continues its chaos, brothers moving past with stretchers and reports and the grim business of returning from war. But in this moment, there's just us. A broken man and the woman who refused to let him break alone.
"I love you," I whisper against his chest. "I love you. I love you."
He doesn't say it back. He can't speak at all. But his arms tighten around me, and I know.
I know.
We stand there until the medical staff comes to insist he be treated, until the wounds on his body can't be ignored any longer.
Even then, I don't leave his side. I follow him to the medical bay, hold his hand while they stitch and bandage and give him fluids.
I stay when exhaustion finally claims him, when his eyes close and his grip on my hand loosens in sleep.
I stay.
Because that's what you do when you love someone. Not fix them. Not save them. Not earn the right to be loved through usefulness.
Just stay.