Page 35 of Sentinel of Talon Mountain
"It started with messages. Cold. Formal. Accusations. Then it took a hard turn for the worse. I was the one who lived. Her husband didn’t. That math didn’t sit right with her."
A brittle laugh escapes before I can stop it. "So, I did what people like us do when the walls get too close. I left and disappeared into the woods. Built a new cage out of trees andsilence, convinced it would be safer to disappear than to stay and face the wreckage."
Nate reaches for me, but I brush his hand away, and continue. "At first, it felt like freedom—no questions, no pity, no eyes watching me unravel. But the quiet turned heavy, like the pressure before a storm, and some nights, it pressed against my chest until I forgot what breathing without guilt felt like."
I meet his stare and find no judgment there. Just something quiet and unflinching, steady as stone and twice as grounding. The way he looks at me, like nothing I say could make him flinch, leaves a strange ache in my chest—equal parts comfort and confusion.
"You think that makes you weak?" he asks, his voice quieter than before, laced with something I don’t expect: gentleness.
The softness in his tone slips past my defenses like a warm hand pressed to cold skin. I feel it too fast and too deep, my chest tightening as if it’s been caught off guard. I glance away, pulse tapping at the base of my throat, unsure if I want to be comforted or left alone with my scars. It lands wrong in my chest, like a note held too long in the wrong key. My breath stutters before I can lock it down. I glance away, pretending I didn’t feel that.
"No. It makes me a coward with decent survival instincts."
Nate leans forward, resting his forearms on his thighs. "I’ve watched men bleed out under my command. Good men. Better than me. I walked away more than once, but the guilt didn’t."
He drags a hand through his hair, leaving it messy in a way that tells me he’s been wrestling with the same thoughts for hours—restless, haunted, trying and failing to look composed.
“Sometimes I think about the last op I ran. If I’d called it five minutes earlier… maybe it would’ve ended differently.”
My throat tightens. “So what do you do with that?”
He shrugs, but it’s weighted. “I carry it, and I try not to drop it on the people I care about. The guilt never lightens, but I can choose where I set it down.”
Care. The word reverberates through me like a strike on glass—fragile, dangerous, impossible to ignore. My pulse hammers. I can’t decide if I want to hold onto that word or run from it. It’s been so long since I’ve let anyone get close enough to care. Now it feels too much, too real, and it terrifies me.
I push to my feet, restless. My fingers skim the edge of the stove, grounding myself in the steady heat. Nate rises too, but he keeps his distance.
“You don’t rattle easily,” I say, meeting his eyes. “But letting someone else shoulder the weight with me? I don’t know that I could ask you to do that.”
“You didn’t ask.” His voice is low, steady. “I already did it, Wren. You just haven’t seen it yet.”
I look at him fully now. He’s not trying to seduce or soothe. He’s just there. Steady. That strange mountain stillness he carries, always so impenetrable, thinner tonight than usual—like frost on glass warmed by breath—just enough for me to glimpse the man beneath.
I step closer until I can smell the faint trace of coffee on his breath. My voice is quieter now. "You think I’m worth all this trouble?"
Nate moves with intent, slow and deliberate, until we’re nearly chest to chest. His fingers lift and brush a lock of hair from my cheek. "You’re not trouble. You’re the reason I remember what peace feels like."
His voice softens at the edges, almost reverent. My breath catches in my throat, the unexpected tenderness hitting me harder than it should. For a second, I forget to shield myself, forget to brace. Just feel.
An acute ache blooms in my chest, like my ribs are pulling inward. I want to throw up a shield, spit something cutting that will push him back into familiar distance. But the words catch behind my teeth. I let the silence stretch instead, let him see the places where the cracks run deepest, where I’m not okay, and maybe never was.
"We can’t afford to make mistakes," I whisper.
"Then let’s not. But we don’t need to lie to ourselves to survive either."
I nod once, unsteady and shaky. "Alright. You want the truth? Here it is. I am tired of being strong only in silence. I am tired of hiding in this mountain and convincing myself that surviving is the same thing as living. It is not. It never was."
His thumb traces along my jaw with a touch so steady it anchors me. Not possessive, not demanding, just present—like a vow written in skin.
"Then stop surviving alone. Step down from your private mountain and share your life with people who care about you, people who will not let the weight crush you because they are willing to carry it too."
There it is again—that word I haven’t let myself believe in for too long. Care. The word punches through my chest like a shot—unexpected, heavy, and impossible to ignore. It settles in my chest like a clenched fist, leaving me raw and breathless.
His voice carries no demand, just quiet certainty. My chest tightens, breath snagging for a beat as something cracks loose inside me—something I've held together with grit and will for far too long. My eyes sting, but I don’t look away. I let it settle between us, raw and exposed, and wait to see if it will break me open or hold me steady.
Something inside me gives—subtle, like thawing ice, but real. Not a collapse. Not a surrender. Just the quiet opening of a gate within the wall—a wall no longer standing quite so tall.
A gust of wind rattles the window, snapping us out of the stillness. I blink and take a half-step back. "We should probably run another check of the perimeter. If someone’s dumb enough to come again, I think we should greet them properly."
