Chapter 4 #2
“And you’ll carry those memories for the rest of your life,” I said, not unkindly. “But you can’t let them destroy you. The dead don’t need your guilt. They need you to survive. To make their deaths mean something.”
He didn’t look convinced. I hadn’t expected him to. But he nodded jerkily and turned away, and that was enough for now.
The confrontation had drawn attention. People were staring, whispering, the tension in the camp ratcheting up another notch. I could see it in the way they held themselves, in the tightness of their shoulders and the whites of their eyes.
This group was fragile. Fractured. One good push and they’d shatter completely.
I needed a moment. The bear was too close to the front right now. The rage begging to be released.
I walked to the edge of camp, far enough that I could see without being overheard, and let myself breathe. Let myself feel the bear’s presence properly, without trying to manage it or suppress it.
He was spiralling. I could feel it. The urge to lash out, to tear into these threats to his mate, to rip and rend and destroy anything that might cause her harm.
The bear didn’t understand that these people weren’t enemies.
He just knew they were unstable, unpredictable, dangerous.
And his solution to danger was always the same: eliminate it.
He didn’t see the irony that they were so much more like us than anyone else around us.
No, I told him firmly. These people need protection, not violence. They’re not threats. They’re victims.
The bear snarled his disagreement. They could hurt her. Could hurt them all.
And if we hurt them first, we become the monsters they already think we are.
It was still strange to hear my bear. That coming to Nymeria had given him a voice, pushed him to much closer to the surface than he’d ever been before. And yet with that closer came a greater understanding, a greater degree of control through compromise rather than oppression.
It took several long moments to calm him down, to ease him back from the edge.
Violence wasn’t the answer here. It couldn’t be.
These people had suffered enough violence to last several lifetimes.
What they needed was stability. Safety. Someone to show them that not everyone in a position of power would use it to hurt them.
I could be that someone. It wasn’t a glamorous role, but it was a necessary one.
Once the bear had settled into a low, watchful alertness rather than active aggression, I turned my attention back to the camp. To my people. To the fractures I could see forming in the foundation of what we were trying to build.
Dean was avoiding Damon. I’d noticed it last night and again this morning.
I could see it in the way he walked wide circles around where Damon sat, the way his eyes would track toward his brother and then deliberately look away.
I understood the instinct. None of us knew if we were looking at Damon or the nightmare at any given moment.
It could play us so easily. The only reason we ever found out was because it took so much amusement in breaking the illusion.
Or at least, the times it let the illusion fall.
There could have been others when it just let us keep believing.
But avoidance wasn’t going to solve anything. If anything, it only made things worse.
Maddox was sitting by himself, staring at the marks on his arm.
He’d been doing that a lot since we left the battlefield.
Tracing the golden patterns with his fingertips, his expression distant and haunted.
The Summer Court magic had claimed him as its heir, and he didn’t know what to do with it.
Didn’t know how to carry the weight of Rhidian’s legacy along with the guilt of Rhidian’s death.
Ryder was cracking jokes with some of the spring court fighters, his voice carrying across the camp with exaggerated cheerfulness.
But I could hear the brittleness underneath.
The humor was getting darker, more desperate, the smile never quite reaching his eyes.
He was deflecting. Hiding. Using laughter as armour against everything he didn’t want to feel, even as he tried to make all of those around him feel better.
And Alyssa...
Alyssa was holding everyone together through sheer force of will.
Moving through the camp, checking on the wounded, speaking quietly with the freed Endless, projecting calm and confidence even though I knew, I knew, she was cracking apart inside.
She was carrying so much. Too much. And she wouldn’t let any of us help because she thought she had to be strong for everyone else.
At the edges of everything, I could see Fizzle.
The little creature was hovering at the periphery of the camp, close enough to watch but far enough to be clearly excluded.
Alyssa had shut him out, he knew it, and he didn’t know how to fix it.
I could see the anxiety in the way he moved, the guilt in the set of his wings. He was hurting too.
Everyone was hurting. Everyone was broken in their own way. Who was supposed to hold all these pieces together long enough for them to heal?
The bear rumbled at the back of my mind. Why haven’t we killed the nightmare yet?
Because it’s wearing someone they love, I reminded him.
The bear didn’t understand that. To him, threats were threats. You eliminated them. You didn’t negotiate with them or try to save them or chain them up in the hope that somehow, someday, you’d find a solution that didn’t involve teeth and claws.
But I understood. That was my role in this pack. I was here to see the long game when others were stuck in the moment. To hold steady when everything else was chaos. To be the anchor that kept them all from drifting apart.
I’d given up my sleuth for this. For Alyssa, specifically.
For the woman I’d known was my mate before I’d had any idea how that was possible.
I’d left behind everything I knew, everyone who’d been like family before, because I couldn’t leave her.
Couldn’t walk away from the bond that tied us together even when I didn’t understand it.
I didn’t regret that choice. Not for a second.
But some days, the weight of it was heavier than others.
As I looked around at the camp, at the broken people and the fragile hope and the impossible task ahead of us, I realised that I was content. Even now with all the pain and the horrors that no doubt lay ahead of us.
This was what I was born to do. Not the fighting, though I could fight when I needed to.
Not the leading, though I could lead when others couldn’t.
No, my purpose was simpler than that. Quieter.
I was the watcher. The steady presence at the edges.
The one who made sure everyone had what they needed, even when they didn’t know what that was.
I would keep watch from the sidelines. I would hold them together. I would make sure they all survived this, no matter what it cost me.
We had maybe an hour before the camp would be ready to move.
That wasn’t much time, but it would have to be enough.
Once we reached the ship, we could make a proper plan.
Stop reacting and start acting. Figure out what came next.
Arik would have felt the blow we’d dealt him at his training camp and we needed to hit him again before he had a chance to recover.
Looking around at the injured, at the ones who might not make it if we didn’t move soon, I knew we couldn’t afford to delay. Some of these people needed real medical attention, not the field dressings and hope we’d been offering them. Every hour we spent here was an hour they might not have.
But maybe that could work in our favour. Maybe what these fractured, frightened people needed wasn’t rest. Maybe they needed purpose. A mission. Something to fight for that wasn’t each other.
Get the wounded to safety. Protect the ones who can’t protect themselves. Give everything you have to make sure one more person survives.
That was something they could understand. Something they could rally around.
I made my way across the camp to where Alyssa stood, speaking quietly with one of Rhidian’s men.
She looked up as I approached, and I saw the exhaustion she was trying to hide.
The grief. The fear. She was barely holding herself together, and she was doing it so well that most people probably couldn’t tell.
But I could tell. I always could.
She finished her conversation and turned to me, her expression shifting into something more guarded. More controlled. The face she wore when she was trying to be the leader everyone needed.
“Tank. Everything alright?”
“We need to move soon,” I said. “The wounded won’t last much longer without proper treatment. And the tension in camp is rising. If we don’t give these people something to focus on, we’re going to have a real problem on our hands.”
She nodded slowly, her gaze drifting across the camp. Taking in the same things I’d seen. The fractures. The fear. The powder keg waiting for a spark.
“I know,” she said quietly. “I’ve been thinking the same thing. We should…” She stopped, her jaw tightening. “We should be at the ship by nightfall on the second day if we push hard. Most of us, anyway.”
“Some won’t make it,” I agreed. It wasn’t a pleasant truth, but it was truth nonetheless.
“I know.” Her voice was barely above a whisper now. “I know.”
I studied her for a moment. The tension in her shoulders, the shadows under her eyes, the way she was carrying herself like the slightest breeze might knock her over.
“How are you doing?” I asked. “Really.”
She laughed, but there was no humour in it. “I’m fine, Tank. I’m…”
“Alyssa.”
Just her name. But she heard everything I wasn’t saying in it. The concern. The care. The refusal to accept a deflection.
Her composure cracked, just slightly. Just enough for me to see the devastation underneath.
“I’m finding it hard,” she admitted. “Rhidian... it’s hitting me harder than the rest of it.
And I feel guilty for that. There are so many people dead, so many lives lost, and all I can think about is him.
” She wrapped her arms around herself, that familiar self-protective gesture.
“What kind of person does that make me? These people died fighting for something I started. And I can’t even mourn them properly because I’m too busy mourning him. ”
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” I said gently. “You can’t grieve for people you didn’t know. Not really. Not the way you grieve for someone who mattered to you. That’s not a flaw. That’s just how hearts work.”
She shook her head, but I could see some of the tension leaving her shoulders. “I wish I could have loved him,” she said, so quietly I almost didn’t hear. “The way he loved me. I wish I could have given him that. Made him happy, even for just this short time.”
“He knew you cared for him.”
“But caring isn’t the same as loving.” She met my eyes, and there was so much pain there it made my chest ache. “He deserved more than I could give. And now he’s gone, and I can never make that right.”
I wanted to pull her into my arms. Wanted to wrap her up and shield her from all of this. The guilt, the grief, the impossible weight she was carrying. The bear wanted it too, was pushing at me to comfort our mate, to protect her from her own pain.
But we were in the middle of camp, surrounded by people who needed her to be strong. So instead, I just reached out and squeezed her hand briefly.
“You can’t change the past,” I said. “You can only honour it by moving forward. Rhidian believed in you. Believed in what you’re fighting for.
He knew that if there was a way to save all of this, you would be the person to find it.
The best way to make his death mean something is to finish what he died for. ”
She held my gaze for a long moment. Then she nodded, squaring her shoulders, pulling that mask of composure back into place.
“You’re right,” she said. “We need to move. We need to get these people to safety, and then we need to figure out our next steps.” She paused, something flickering across her expression. “And we need to figure out what to do about Damon. We can’t keep dragging him along in chains forever.”
“No,” I agreed. “We can’t.”
But that was a problem for later. For now, we had a more immediate mission: get the wounded to the ship before we lost any more of them.
Alyssa straightened, and I watched her transform. I watched the grieving woman disappear behind the mask of the queen. She raised her voice, letting it carry across the camp.
“Everyone! Start packing up. We’re moving out within the hour.
Help the wounded if you can walk on your own.
We’re going to the ship. There’s food, medicine, and safety there.
But we need to move as fast as we can. Lives depend on it.
I you’re able bodied, find someone who is wounded and stick with them. We will survive this.”
People started to stir. Started to move. And just like that, the tension in the camp shifted. It didn’t disappear, that would take more than a single speech, but it found a direction. A purpose.
I watched Alyssa work, watched her move through the camp rallying people, and I felt something like pride warming my chest.
She was going to be an incredible queen. She already was.
And I would be right here beside her, every step of the way. Watching. Waiting. Holding everything together so she could focus on saving the world.
That was my role. And I was content with it.
Someone had to be the anchor. Someone had to be her king. Might as well be me, and the rest of them when they were ready for it too.