20. Stellan
STELLAN
She stayed.
I wake to find her curled in the chair beside my medical bed, her hand still holding mine, her face soft with exhausted sleep.
The compound's makeshift infirmary is quiet around us, the other wounded brothers resting or being tended to by the medical staff.
Dawn light filters through the small windows, casting everything in shades of gold and gray.
But all I can see is her. This woman who refused to leave.
Who caught me when I broke. Who held me through the worst moment of my life and never flinched.
I tried to push her away. Tried to convince her I was a monster, tried to make her see what I'd become in the red haze of the berserker.
I told her to find someone else, someone who wouldn't destroy her the way I destroy everything I touch.
I gave her every reason to run, every excuse she could have needed to walk away from a man who doesn't deserve her.
And she stayed anyway.
My body aches in a dozen places, the wounds from the battle making themselves known now that the adrenaline has faded.
The knife wound in my side pulls with every breath, stitched and bandaged but still raw.
The gash on my arm throbs beneath its wrapping.
My muscles feel like they've been torn and reassembled, the aftermath of what the morveth does to my body during an episode.
Even my bones ache, a deep exhaustion that goes beyond physical pain.
But none of it compares to the ache in my chest. The hollowed-out feeling that comes from almost losing yourself completely, from clawing your way back from an abyss that wanted to swallow you whole.
Esmerelda stirs beside me, her eyes fluttering open slowly, adjusting to the dim light of the infirmary.
When she sees me watching her, studying her face like I'm trying to memorize every detail, she smiles.
It's tired, worn at the edges, shadowed with worry and exhaustion, but still smiling.
Like I'm something worth smiling at, worth staying awake for, worth keeping vigil over through the darkest hours of the night.
"You're awake," she says, her voice rough with sleep and emotion. "How do you feel?"
"Like I was hit by a convoy." The words come out hoarse, scratchy, my throat raw from screaming or from silence, I'm not sure which. "Then ran over. Twice. Maybe three times for good measure."
"The doctors said you'll recover fully. The knife missed anything vital—your liver, your kidneys. You were lucky."
Lucky. I don't know if that's the word I'd use for surviving another episode, for waking up surrounded by bodies I don't remember creating, for clawing my way back from the edge of oblivion one more time.
But I'm alive, breathing, my heart still beating despite everything.
And she's here, real and solid and refusing to leave. Maybe that counts as luck after all.
"You stayed," I say, and it comes out more vulnerable than I intend, more exposed.
"I told you I would."
"I tried to push you away. Said things I shouldn't have."
"I know." She shifts closer, leaning forward in her chair, her hand tightening around mine with gentle pressure. "And I told you I wasn't going anywhere. I meant it, Stellan. Every word. I'm not going anywhere."
The conviction in her voice breaks something inside me. Something I've been holding together for fifteen years, a dam that's finally, completely crumbling. I feel tears prick at my eyes, hot and shameful, and I turn my face away so she won't see.
"Don't," she says softly. "Don't hide from me. Not anymore."
"I don't know how to do this." The words tear out of me, raw and exposed. "I've spent so long keeping everyone at distance. Protecting them from what I am. And now you're here, and you won't leave, and I don't know how to let you see all of it."
"Then show me." She moves from the chair to the edge of my bed, close enough that I can smell her perfume, feel the warmth radiating off her body. "Tell me what happened. What you felt. Let me understand."
I close my eyes, and the darkness behind my lids fills with red.
"I was gone," I whisper. "There was nothing left of me. Just rage. Pure, endless rage that wanted to destroy everything it touched."
"I know it's not you?—"
"No." I open my eyes, needing her to see this, to understand.
"It IS me. That's what I need you to understand.
The beast isn't something separate, something that possesses me.
It's part of who I am. The violence, the destruction, the thing that can tear through a battlefield and leave nothing but bodies—that's me.
A part of me I can't cut out or run from or fix. "
She doesn't flinch. Doesn't pull away. Just holds my hand and waits for me to continue.
"When the break happens, I don't disappear.
I'm still there, somewhere, watching through a red filter while my body does things I can't control.
I can feel my hands around someone's throat.
I can feel their bones breaking. And some part of me is screaming to stop, but the screaming doesn't matter.
The beast doesn't care about screaming."
"But you came back," she says. "You always come back."
"Because I heard you." The confession feels like cutting myself open, exposing something vital and vulnerable.
"Your voice. In the dark. In the deepest part of the red, where I couldn't feel anything, couldn't remember anything, I heard you saying 'come back to me.
' Like a light in the distance. A thread I could follow home. "
Her eyes are bright with tears. "I said that before you left."
"I know. I carried it with me. I held onto it like a lifeline, even when I didn't know what a lifeline was anymore." I swallow hard, forcing myself to continue. "But what if next time I can't hear you? What if I'm too far gone? What if the beast goes so deep that even your voice can't reach me?"
"Then I'll be louder." She says it with such simple certainty, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "I'll scream. I'll find a radio, a speaker, anything. I'll reach you however I have to."
"You can't promise that."
"I can promise to try." She lifts my hand to her lips, pressing a kiss to my scarred knuckles. "That's all either of us can do. Try."
The tears are falling now, streaming down my face despite my efforts to contain them.
I haven't cried since Mira's funeral. Haven't let myself feel this exposed, this raw, this broken open for anyone to see.
But Esmerelda doesn't look away. Doesn't offer empty comfort or try to fix it.
Just holds my hand and lets me feel what I need to feel.
"Mira saw me like that," I say, and her name on my lips is still a wound after all these years. "Once. After I killed those boys who were hurting her. She looked at me when I was still covered in their blood, still coming back from the red, and she never looked at me the same again."
"I know. You told me."
"I've spent fifteen years waiting for someone else to look at me that way.
Waiting for the fear, the disgust, the moment when they realize what I really am and they can't see me as human anymore.
" My voice breaks, and I have to force the next words out.
"I've been proving them right before they could prove me right.
Pushing people away before they could leave.
Keeping everyone at arm's length so I never have to see that look again. "
"And me?" she asks quietly. "What do you see when you look at me?"
I meet her eyes, those warm brown eyes that have never once looked at me with fear. "You don't look at me like a monster."
"Because you're not one."
"I AM one. The beast is me. It's part of me, woven into my blood and my bones and every fiber of who I am. Loving me means loving that too. The violence. The potential for destruction. The thing that could turn on you someday and?—"
"Stop." Her voice is firm, cutting through my spiral. "Stop right there."
She takes my face in her hands, forcing me to look at her, to really see her. There's no fear in her expression. No disgust. Just love, fierce and unwavering, the kind that doesn't flinch from hard truths.
"Then I love the beast too," she says. "It's part of you. It protected me during the attack. It came back for me when I screamed your name. The beast isn't just destruction, Stellan. It's protection. It's loyalty. It's the part of you that would burn the world to keep the people you love safe."
"What if it doesn't come back someday? What if it stays in the dark forever, and I become the monster I'm afraid of?"
"Then we'll figure it out. Together." She kisses me, soft and reverent, her lips warm against mine.
"I'm not Mira. I'm not a child who saw something terrifying and couldn't understand it.
I'm a grown woman who has seen what you are, all of it, and I'm choosing to stay.
I'm not going to flinch. I'm not going to run.
I'm going to be right here, holding your hand, for as long as you'll let me. "
Something shatters inside me. The last wall, the final defense I'd built around the part of myself that desperately wanted to believe I could be loved.
It crumbles, and suddenly I'm sobbing, ugly and raw and completely uncontrolled.
Fifteen years of grief and loneliness and self-hatred pouring out of me like poison from a wound.
Esmerelda doesn't hesitate. She climbs onto the bed beside me, careful of my injuries, and pulls me into her arms. My head finds her shoulder, my massive body curled around hers like she's the only solid thing in a dissolving world.
"I've got you," she whispers, her hand running through my hair. "I've got you. It's okay to break. I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."
I cry for everything I've lost. For Mira, my baby sister who died without forgiving me, who spent her last years afraid of the brother who had loved her more than anything.
For the years I spent alone, convinced I didn't deserve connection, building walls so high that no one could ever see over them.
For the brothers I've kept at arm's length, afraid to let them see who I really was beneath the discipline and the control and the counting.
For every time I counted to seven instead of letting myself feel something.
For every moment I chose isolation over the risk of being seen.
And I cry for what I might be gaining. The terrifying, beautiful possibility that this woman means every word she says.
That she sees the monster and chooses to stay anyway.
That I might actually get to have this, to keep this, to build a life with someone who loves all of me.
Not the version I present to the world, not the controlled treasurer who keeps everyone at distance. All of me. Beast and man together.
She holds me through all of it. Minutes that stretch into what feels like hours, her arms never loosening, her voice a constant murmur of comfort in my ear. She doesn't try to stop the tears or speed up the process. Just lets me break, and stays to help me put the pieces back together.
When the sobs finally subside, when I'm empty and exhausted and somehow lighter than I've felt in fifteen years, I lift my head to look at her. Her face is streaked with her own tears, but she's smiling that soft, certain smile that makes the beast go quiet.
"Thank you," I rasp, my voice still rough and raw from crying.
"For staying. For seeing me—really seeing me, even the parts I've tried to hide for so long.
For—" I stop, searching for words that feel hopelessly inadequate to express what she's given me tonight. "For refusing to let me push you away."
"I'm stubborn like that." She kisses my forehead, her lips soft and warm against my skin. "Kira tells me it's one of my less charming qualities. That I don't know when to back down from something I believe in."
"I think it might be my favorite one." The words come out thick with emotion, but honest. Raw. True.
She laughs, watery but real, and the sound is like sunlight breaking through storm clouds after days of darkness.
"I don't know how to do this," I admit. "I don't know how to be in a relationship. How to let someone in. How to stop being afraid every moment that I'm going to destroy something good."
"Neither do I," she says. "Not really. I'm still learning how to just be present without trying to fix everything. We're both figuring this out."
"Together?"
"Together." She settles against me, her head on my chest, her body warm and solid beside mine.
"One day at a time. One moment at a time.
And whenever the beast gets too loud, whenever you start to slip into the dark, you tell me.
You let me help. Not fix," she adds quickly, with a small smile. "Just help."
"I can try."
"That's all I ask."
We lie there in the quiet of the medical bay, her breathing slowly syncing with mine.
The compound continues around us, the business of recovery and rebuilding after battle.
I can hear brothers moving past the door, voices exchanging updates on the wounded, the rumble of vehicles being repaired.
The war isn't over. Dragan is still out there.
There will be more battles to come, more moments when the beast might rise and I'll have to fight my way back from the dark.
But I won't be doing it alone anymore.
For the first time in fifteen years, the beast is completely silent.
Not just quiet, not just settled. Silent.
Like it's sleeping, satisfied, at peace in a way I've never felt before.
Esmerelda's presence has always calmed the morveth, but this is different.
This is deeper. Like some fundamental tension I've carried for years has finally, finally released.
Outside, I hear Kieran's voice, giving orders, organizing the recovery effort. I should probably check in with him, report on my status, help coordinate whatever comes next. But I can't bring myself to move. Can't bring myself to leave this moment, this bed, this woman who's changed everything.
"Sleep," Esmerelda murmurs against my chest. "You need to heal. I'll be here when you wake up."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
And in that silence, in the warmth of her body against mine and the steady rhythm of her heartbeat beneath my ear, I find something I thought I'd lost forever. Something that feels suspiciously like hope.
Maybe even like a future.