Page 11

"Tell me the truth," I said, opening my eyes to meet his gaze. "Why did you go along with this? From the beginning—when I claimed you in the market, you didn't contradict me. Why?"

For the first time, something like uncertainty crossed Uldrek's features. He looked away, toward the setting sun that painted the garden in amber and gold.

"At first? Instinct." He paused. "You were afraid. The prick who was threatening you needed to back off. Simple as that."

"And after?"

He was quiet for so long that I thought he might not answer.

When he finally did, his voice was low, almost rough.

"I've been fighting other people's wars for a long time.

Protecting people who needed it, and then moving on.

It's what I know." He looked back at me.

"But this felt different. You weren't asking me to fight for you.

You were just... reaching. And something in me answered. "

The words settled in the space between us, honest and unadorned. No poetry, no grand declarations—just a simple truth. Something in me reached. Something in him answered.

"I won't pressure you," he added, his expression serious. "This has to be your choice.”

I looked down at Ellie, still asleep and warm against my chest, her mouth slightly open, her lashes too long for something so small. She had slept through the entire ordeal inside the Civic Hall, as if she trusted—without question—that I would keep her safe.

"When I married Gavriel," I said slowly, carefully choosing each word, "it felt like a story I already knew by heart. Grand gestures, beautiful words, the kind of thing scholars romanticize in plays."

I wrapped an arm around my middle and looked up at the darkening sky, past the boughs of the alder-wreathed trellis, to a single silver thread of cloud unraveling across the horizon.

"But once the ink dried and the doors shut, I realized he only made space for the version of me he wanted. Anything else—anything truly mine—felt like a threat. It stopped being love and started feeling like ownership. And when I strayed too far from it, things cracked."

Even now, speaking those things aloud had a bite to them, like reopening a wound that hadn’t finished scabbing over.

"I told myself I was smart enough to see through that. Brave enough to leave, eventually. And I did leave. But it cost me everything.” I shifted Ellie slightly, brushing a loose curl from her forehead. “My name. My reputation. My faith in myself. All of it.”

I looked at Uldrek again, heart pounding. “So when you say this mark can’t be undone, I need you to understand that I don’t take that lightly. I don’t have space inside me for another mistake I can't walk away from.”

Uldrek didn’t react right away. He just looked at me—as if he could see each folded page of the story I hadn’t told yet. His eyes were steady and strange and soft all at once, the kind of gaze that didn’t pierce but offered something quieter: a place to be seen.

“This isn’t about ownership,” he said at last, voice low. “It’s not a leash. It’s a tether—if you want it.”

“But it is a bond. Permanent.”

“It can fade,” he said. “If the bond’s not tended, it weakens. But yes. It changes things. It leaves a mark—on the body, sure. But mostly in the choice.”

I looked down at Ellie again, her body slack with sleep, her cheek pressed against my collarbone. She trusted me to carry her. To choose right.

“I’m still learning who I am,” I said. “Apart from fear. Apart from him. I don’t know if I’m ready to be bound to anyone again.”

Uldrek nodded. “You don’t owe me anything. Whatever you decide—decide for you. Not because you’re cornered. Not because you’re afraid.”

I looked at him. Really looked. The worn leather cord at his throat. The tired steadiness in his eyes. The way he hadn’t tried to fill the silence.

“And if I decide not to do it?” I asked. “If I can’t?”

His gaze didn’t flinch. “Then we figure something else out. I’ll still walk beside you.”

For a moment, the wind shifted, carrying the scent of lavender and worn stone, and with it a fragile peace that seemed borrowed from some other life.

The kind I used to imagine in stolen glances across candlelit libraries, in the hush just before dawn when the fire burned low and I believed—just barely—that safety might return in tiny, stubborn sparks.

Now, it hovered here, in the curl of Ellie’s fingers, in Uldrek’s worn voice offering space instead of promise.

I let the silence stretch between us like a narrow bridge. I wasn’t ready to cross it. Not yet. But I could see the other side.

“I need to think,” I said finally. “Not just about the bite. About everything.”

Uldrek nodded once. Nothing in him pushed. He just stood slowly, rolling his shoulders.

“I’ll be at the training yard in the morning,” he said and then turned to leave.

When he was gone, the quiet felt different—deeper but not empty.

I tightened the sling around Ellie, pressed my lips to her brow, and whispered my own name against her skin—first the old one, cracked and fragile… then the new one. Chosen. Claimed.

Somewhere between them, I might still find the woman I was becoming. But first, I would think. I would walk. I would listen to myself.

And when the time came, I would choose. Not out of fear.

But because it was finally up to me.