Page 70 of Mate Night Snack
"He told me about the pack members who died," she whispered. "Because of your choice to spare that girl."
Emmett went very still. "What exactly did he say?"
"That three wolves died in an ambush because you'd compromised your position. That they trusted your leadership right up until enemy claws tore out their throats." She opened her eyes to look at him. "Is it true?"
The silence that followed felt like an eternity.
"Yes," he said finally.
The simple honesty of it was somehow worse than any elaborate explanation would have been. No justification, no attempt to soften the blow. Just the truth, stark and unforgiving.
"Were you going to tell me?"
"Eventually." His hands clenched into fists in his lap. "When I figured out how to explain that the man you love is responsible for the deaths of people who trusted him."
"And the nightmares? The guilt you carry?"
"Those too."
Katniss felt something crack inside her chest. The foundation of trust she'd built everything else on.
"What else haven't you told me?" she asked.
"Nothing that matters."
"Everything matters now. I've been walking around thinking I knew you, thinking I understood what I was getting into, but I was wrong, wasn't I? I fell in love with a carefully constructed version of the truth."
Emmett flinched like she'd slapped him. "That's not fair."
"Isn't it? You let me believe your exile was about choosing mercy over cruelty. You never mentioned that your mercy got people killed."
"Because it's not that simple."
"Then explain it to me." She struggled to sit up straighter, ignoring the way the movement made her arm throb. "Help me understand how the man I love is responsible for three deaths and I'm just now hearing about it."
His gaze fixed on something beyond the window. When he spoke, his voice was carefully controlled.
"I’ve told you what I chose and what Ashwin did because of that choice."
Katniss nodded but waited, sensing there was more.
"The ambush wasn't random. It was punishment. Ashwin sent us into enemy territory on what he claimed was a rescue mission, but it was really an execution. He wanted to teach me what happened to wolves who valued mercy over pack loyalty."
"But you survived."
"I survived because I was fast enough to run when the trap closed. The others..." He closed his eyes. "They trusted my leadership. When I said the mission was legitimate, they believed me. They died because I wasn't smart enough to see through Ashwin's game."
The pain in his voice was raw, real, the kind of agony that came from carrying guilt for years without reprieve. But underneath it, Katniss could hear something else. The same protective instinct that had driven him to spare that terrified girl in the first place.
"You were trying to save her," she said softly.
"And I got three good wolves killed in the process and she died anyway." He opened his eyes to look at her. "I made a choice. People died because of that choice. And that rests with only me."
Katniss stared at him, seeing not the monster Ashwin had tried to paint but the man who'd been carrying impossible guilt for years. Who'd chosen exile over excuses, who'd spent a decade trying to atone for a moment of compassion that had been exploited by someone truly evil.
But the doubts Ashwin had planted were still there, whispering poison in the quiet spaces of her mind.
"I need you to break the bond," she said suddenly.
