Page 40 of Tater
This wasn’t the kind of win that heals anything.
It just stopped the bleeding.
The dragon hummed low inside her, not a roar, not a command—just a presence.
“We are whole now,”it whispers. “We are ours.”
Ren nodded once, whisper back, “And we stay that way.”
Lightning flashed somewhere beyond the ridge, just enough to turn the rain silver. For a moment, the world looked clean, even if she didn’t.
She closed her eyes, let the storm rinse the last of the heat from her skin, and breathed.
One long, steady breath.
Then—
Footsteps. Slow, deliberate, coming up the road.
She didn’t need to look.
She could feel him before she seen him—steady weight in the rain, the pull of something she’d almost forgotten how to trust.
Tater.
The chain bit into her hand as she turned toward the sound.
She didn’t know what he’d see when he reached her—the woman, the monster, or something in between.
But for the first time in years, she was not afraid of any of it.
Ren opened her eyes as he crested the ridge.
And she waited.
CHAPTER 20
Leaving the Ridge
He crested the ridge slowly, boots sinking into the mud, breath catching somewhere between a prayer and a curse.
The rain’s thinner up here, softer—like even the storm knows to quiet down now. Steam rises off the pavement, mixing with smoke, and for a second, he couldn’t tell where the world ended, and the wreck began.
Then he saw her.
Ren.
Standing in the middle of the road, rain sliding down her face like she’s carved out of the night itself. Firelight still clung to her skin in traces, faint veins of gold that pulse and fade beneath the surface. Her eyes found him before anything else did—steady, unflinching.
Between them lies the man who started all this.
Shadow.
Crushed against the rail, chest still, blood washing thin into the rain.
Tater stopped breathing.
He should be relieved. Should feel the kind of satisfaction that comes when a monster’s gone. But all he can do is look at her, the knife slack in her hand, the chain glinting at her fingers.
