21. Esmerelda
ESMERELDA
The world tilts sideways without warning.
One moment I'm standing in the mess hall, reaching for a cup of coffee, and the next the room is spinning, the floor rushing up to meet me. I hear someone call my name, feel hands catching me before I hit the ground, and then everything goes gray at the edges.
"Esme!" Kira's voice, sharp with concern. "Someone get Stellan!"
I try to protest, try to say I'm fine, just tired, just need a minute. But my voice won't cooperate. My body won't cooperate. Everything feels heavy and distant, like I'm watching myself from somewhere far away. The coffee cup shatters on the floor, but the sound seems to come from miles away.
Margot is there suddenly, her hand on my forehead, checking for fever. Eliza's voice, worried and soft. The other women gathering around, and I want to tell them all to stop fussing, that I'm fine, that I just need to sit down for a second.
Heavy footsteps. A rumble of panic that I recognize even through the fog.
"What happened?" Stellan's voice, rough with fear. The crowd parts for him, and then he's there, his massive form blocking out the light.
"She just collapsed. She hasn't been eating. Hasn't been sleeping." Kira's words come fast, worried. "She's been taking care of everyone else and ignoring herself. I should have noticed sooner."
Strong arms scoop me up like I weigh nothing. I feel myself pressed against a broad chest, hear the steady thunder of a heartbeat beneath my ear. The world sways as he carries me, and I finally manage to get my voice working.
"I'm fine," I mumble. "Just stood up too fast. I'm fine."
"You're not fine." His voice is tight, controlled, the way it gets when he's fighting to stay calm. "You're shaking. You're pale. When did you last eat?"
I try to remember. Yesterday? The day before? The days have blurred together since the battle, since the medical bay, since holding him through his breakdown and refusing to leave his side. There's been so much to do. So many wounded brothers. So many people who needed help.
"I don't... I had coffee this morning."
"Coffee isn't food." He sounds angry, but I know him well enough now to hear the fear underneath it. "When did you last sleep?"
That's harder to answer. I've been dozing in chairs, catching fragments of rest between checking on Stellan and helping with the wounded and doing whatever needed to be done. But actual sleep? In a bed? For more than an hour or two?
I can't remember.
The door to his room opens, and then I'm being laid on the bed, gentle despite his obvious agitation. He pulls the blankets over me, tucking them around my shoulders like I'm something fragile that needs protecting.
"Stay here," he orders. "Don't move."
"Stellan, I'm fine. There's work to do. The wounded need?—"
"The wounded have the medical staff." He crouches beside the bed, his dark eyes boring into mine. "You need rest. And food. And someone to take care of you for once instead of letting you run yourself into the ground."
"I can't just lie here while everyone else?—"
"You can. You will." His voice softens, but there's steel beneath it. "You've been taking care of everyone, Esme. The brothers, the other women, me. Who's been taking care of you?"
The question stops me cold.
Because the answer is no one. The answer is always no one. I'm the one who takes care of people. That's my role, my purpose, the thing that makes me useful. I don't need anyone to take care of me. I'm fine on my own. I've always been fine on my own.
But looking at his face, seeing the worry etched into every line, I realize something I've been refusing to admit.
I'm not fine. I'm exhausted and depleted and running on nothing but caffeine and stubbornness.
I've spent so much energy holding everyone else together that I forgot to hold myself together too.
"I don't..." The words catch in my throat. "I don't know how to let people. Take care of me, I mean. I've always been the one who?—"
"I know." He takes my hand, his massive palm engulfing mine. "But you're going to learn. Because I need to take care of you. It's how I show love. And you have to let me."
The reversal is so complete, so unexpected, that I don't know what to say.
For weeks I've been trying to support him, to be his anchor, to prove that my love doesn't require him to be fixed.
And now he's here, kneeling beside my bed, looking at me with that fierce protective tenderness, asking me to let him do the same thing I've been asking him to do.
Let someone in. Accept care without earning it. Trust that I deserve love even when I'm not being useful.
"Stay here," he says again. "I'll be right back."
He's gone before I can argue, and I lie there staring at the ceiling, too tired to move.
The room is quiet, familiar now. His room.
Our room, I suppose, though I haven't let myself think of it that way.
His weapons on the wall, cleaned and organized.
His leather bracelet on the nightstand, the one Mira made, precious enough to leave behind when he went to battle.
And now, woven into all of it, traces of me.
My jacket draped over the chair. My phone charging on the dresser.
The small changes that happen when two lives start to merge.
He returns with a tray. Soup, bread, a glass of water, a cup of tea. Simple things, but the sight of them makes my stomach growl, my body finally waking up enough to remind me of what I've been ignoring.
"Eat," he says, settling the tray on the bed beside me. "Every bite."
"You don't have to?—"
"Eat."
I eat. Because arguing with that voice is pointless, and because he's right, and because the food tastes better than anything I've had in days. He watches me the whole time, sitting in the chair beside the bed, his posture alert like he's standing guard against the world.
When the bowl is empty and the bread is gone, I finally let myself sink back against the pillows. The exhaustion hits me all at once, a wave so heavy I can barely keep my eyes open.
"Sleep," he says.
"I should?—"
"You should sleep." He moves from the chair to the edge of the bed, careful not to jostle me. "The compound will survive without you for a few hours. The wounded have doctors. The women have each other. And I have you. Here. Safe. Resting."
"You're not playing fair." My voice is slurring, heavy with exhaustion, the words barely coherent as sleep pulls at me with insistent fingers despite my half-hearted protests. "Using my own arguments and logic against me like that."
"I learned from the best." There's a hint of affection threading through his low words.
I want to laugh at that, to say something clever in return, but it comes out as more of a soft, surrendering sigh.
My eyes are already closing against my will, the world and all its demands fading to grey around me, but before I slip completely under the surface of unconsciousness, I feel the careful warmth of his hand brush the damp, tangled hair from my face with infinite gentleness.
Feel the tender press of his lips against my forehead, a promise sealed against my skin.
"I've got you," he murmurs against my temple, his voice barely above a whisper. "Sleep now. I'll be right here when you wake up."
And for the first time since this whole exhausting nightmare started days ago, I finally let myself let go completely.
When I wake, the light has changed. Late afternoon, judging by the golden quality filtering through the window. I'm warm and comfortable, cocooned in blankets that smell like him, and for a moment I just lie there, floating in the space between sleep and waking.
Then I remember. The collapse. Being carried. His voice, telling me to let him take care of me.
I turn my head and find him in the chair beside the bed, a book in his hands. He's not reading it, though. He's watching me, those dark eyes soft with something that looks like relief.
"Hey," I manage to say, my voice rough and scratchy with the thickness of too much sleep.
"Hey." He carefully sets the book aside on the small table next to the chair, marking his place with deliberate precision. "How do you feel?"
I take careful stock of myself, doing a mental inventory from head to toe.
The bone-deep exhaustion that had felt like it was crushing me into the mattress has faded considerably, replaced by something much closer to normal tiredness—the kind you might feel after a long but satisfying day.
My head doesn't ache anymore, that persistent throbbing pain behind my eyes finally gone.
My body doesn't feel like it's running on absolute fumes, held together by nothing but stubbornness and caffeine.
"Better. A lot better, actually." I sit up slowly, testing my balance and equilibrium, and this time the world stays reassuringly steady around me. No spinning, no tilting, no nausea. "How long was I out?"
"Eight hours." He states it matter-of-factly, but there's something watchful in his expression.
"Eight hours?" I stare at him in disbelief, my eyes widening. "I slept for eight straight hours?"
"You needed it." He shifts his position, moving from the chair to sit on the edge of the bed itself, close enough that I can feel the solid warmth radiating from his large frame.
"You've been running on absolutely nothing for days now.
Your body finally demanded payment for what you'd been putting it through. "
"The compound—" I start, immediate worry flooding back.
"Is fine. Kira checked in twice. The medical staff has everything under control. Kieran's coordinating the recovery efforts." His hand finds mine. "Everyone is fine, Esme. Except you, who was determined to work herself into collapse."
The gentle chiding in his voice makes something twist in my chest. Because he's right. I've been so focused on being useful, on earning my place, on proving that I belong here even though I can't fight and I'm not club, that I forgot to take care of the most basic things.
"I spent so long trying to be useful," I whisper. "I forgot to just be."
"I know something about that." His thumb traces circles on the back of my hand. "About thinking you have to earn your place. About believing that if you stop being useful, people will realize they don't need you anymore."
I look at him, this man who's spent fifteen years isolating himself because he thought he wasn't safe to be around. This man who believed so deeply that he was a monster that he pushed away anyone who might have proven otherwise.
We're not so different, really. Different wounds, but the same fear underneath. The fear of not being enough. The fear of being left behind.
"I can't fix you," I say quietly. "I was never going to be able to. I think I knew that from the beginning, but I kept researching and planning anyway, because fixing things is what I do. It's how I've always shown love."
"I know."
"But I can love you. Just love you. Without fixing anything. Without earning anything." I reach up to touch his face, feeling the roughness of his jaw beneath my palm. "And that's enough. Isn't it?"
"It's everything." His voice is thick with emotion. "It's more than enough. It's everything I never thought I'd have."
"And you." I hold his gaze, needing him to hear this. "You can love me. Without me earning it first. Without me being useful or helpful or indispensable. Just me. Tired and messy and apparently unable to feed myself properly."
Something shifts in his expression. The fierce protectiveness that's always there, softening into something gentler.
"You don't have to earn anything with me," he says. "You never did. From the first moment you brought me coffee and looked at me like I was human, you never had to earn anything."
The tears come before I can stop them. Not sad tears, not this time. Something else. Relief, maybe. Or release. The feeling of finally setting down a weight I've been carrying so long I forgot it was there.
He pulls me into his arms, and I go willingly, pressing my face against his chest. His hand strokes my hair, his voice a low rumble against my ear.
"Let me take care of you," he murmurs. "Not because you're broken. Not because you need fixing. Just because I love you, and taking care of the people I love is who I am. It's the best part of me. Let me give you that."
"Okay," I whisper against his shirt. "Okay. I'll try."
"That's all I ask."
We stay like that as the afternoon fades into evening, wrapped up in each other, learning how to let ourselves be held.
For the first time in my life, I'm not the one doing the taking care of.
I'm not the helper, the fixer, the one who makes everything okay.
I'm just me, tired and loved and finally, finally letting someone carry some of the weight.
It's terrifying.
It's wonderful.
It's exactly what I needed but never knew how to ask for.
"I love you," I say, because the words feel inadequate but they're all I have. "I love you, and I'm going to let you love me. Even when it's hard. Even when I want to take over and fix everything myself."
"I'll remind you." He kisses the top of my head. "Every day if I have to. Every hour if necessary."
"You might have to."
"Then I will." He shifts us so we're lying together, my head on his chest, his arms wrapped around me.
"This is what it means to be together. Not just the hard moments.
Not just me falling apart and you putting me back together.
It's this too. It's me watching you sleep because the beast needs to know you're safe.
It's bringing you food because you forget to eat when you're taking care of everyone else.
It's being here, present, for all of it. "
"I think I'm starting to understand that."
"Good. Because I'm not going anywhere. Not ever."
Outside, the compound is preparing for whatever comes next.
The war isn't over. Dragan is still out there.
There will be more battles, more danger, more moments when we're both stretched to our limits.
I can hear brothers moving through the halls, the quiet murmur of planning and preparation.
Tomorrow, or the next day, the fight will continue.
But right now, in this room, there's just us. Two people learning how to be loved without earning it. Two people finally understanding that love isn't something you prove. It's something you accept.
"Thank you," I whisper. "For taking care of me. For not letting me argue my way out of it."
"Always." His voice rumbles through his chest, vibrating against my ear. "That's what I'm here for."
And for the first time in my life, I'm ready to accept it. Ready to believe that I deserve love simply because I exist, not because of what I can do or fix or solve. Ready to let someone carry me when I'm too tired to stand.
It feels like finally coming home.