“Of course I was drunk. You left me with Torvald. What did you think was going to happen?”
Aerik’s voice rose more sharply than he intended, the words breaking the heavy stillness of the room and echoing faintly against the dark stone walls of the apartment. The low light from the window cast long shadows across the floor between them, stretching the distance that neither of them seemed willing to close.
The accusation lingered in the air.
It was the truth.
Leaving him with Torvald had practically guaranteed the outcome. The older warrior drank like a man who had never once worried about the consequences of the next morning, and Aerik had followed him drink for drink until the world blurred into nothing. The memory of that night existed only in fragments. He remembered the warmth of the fire, the rough laughter that carried through the camp, the faint taste of smoke in the air. After that there was only darkness broken by a single moment that refused to fade.
Irina’s lips brushing his cheek.
Then her leaving.
He remembered nothing else.
Aerik shook his head slowly, frustration tightening his jaw. Before he could voice the rest of the thought forming in his mind, Irina continued speaking. Her words forced him to listen as she spoke about Skadi as though it was inevitable, as though the two of them becoming entangled was something that would simply happen with time.
The way she said it made his chest tighten.
It sounded like a foregone conclusion.
That hurt more than he expected.
It was not fair that she had carried those thoughts alone, that she had spent time turning the idea over and over in her mind while he remained completely unaware. They had never spoken about it. The conversation had never happened, and yet somehow the outcome had already been decided in her head.
The room seemed to freeze when she said she had been alone.
Aerik felt the words more than he heard them.
His mind emptied in an instant, as though someone had pulled the ground out from beneath his legs. The anguish behind those words rolled through the bond between them before he could stop it. Their connection turned every emotion into something shared, something impossible to separate.
Some of what he felt was hers.
Some of it was his.
The rest blurred together until he could not tell where one ended and the other began.
All he knew was that it
hurt.
It hurt them
both.
Several seconds passed in silence, though it felt far longer. The air between them felt thick and unmoving, as if even the room itself had paused to watch what would happen next. Irina shifted forward a half step, the movement small but unmistakable.
The gesture felt like a plea.
Aerik did not move.
His thoughts raced as he tried to process something he had never truly considered before. The reason she left made sense, yet it also did not. He had always spoken about them as a pack, a group bound together by loyalty and closeness. He had never stopped to think about what that actually meant beyond the surface of the word.
Irina.
Quinn.
Skadi.
They were the people he trusted most in the galaxy. They were the ones who stood closest to him when everything else fell apart.
Yet he had never asked himself what it meant for them.
For Irina.
For a moment he stood frozen in the center of the room, caught between leaving and staying, between running from the problem and facing it. Irina had already made the consequences clear. If he walked out the door now, that would be the end of it.
Aerik knew one thing with painful certainty.
He
could not lose her.
Of everyone he had drawn into the strange pack he had built around himself, Irina was the one who had been there the longest. Their history stretched farther than the others, rooted in moments that had shaped who he had become.
The choice settled over him like a weight. His steps were quiet as he moved forward. Even his own ears could not detect the sound of his boots against the polished stone floor as he closed the distance between them. Aerik wrapped his arms around her, and for a moment he simply held her. The warmth of her body grounded him in a way nothing else could. The tension that had filled the room slowly bled away as the silence between them stretched on.
“Rin…”
His voice was quieter now.
The pup remained still until she lifted her gaze to meet his. Whatever answer she had been searching for was written plainly in his expression. He did not know what the right words were or how to arrange them into something that made sense. All the training he had received offered no help here. If this had been Quinn he could have relied on the discipline of the Echani arts, the careful reading of motion and posture that guided their conversations. Irina was nothing like Quinn, just as she was nothing like Skadi.
She was something entirely her own.
Aerik lifted a hand and gently tipped her chin upward so that she looked fully at him.
When he kissed her this time the moment was different. There was no desperation in it. He moved slowly, giving the moment space to exist instead of rushing through it. The warmth of the kiss lingered until he finally pulled back, and even then it was only because his lungs demanded air.
His breath escaped in a slow exhale through his nose as he rested his forehead against hers.
“What if I hurt you again?”
The question left him quietly.
It was not the thing that frightened him the most, but Irina had spoken her fear aloud. He understood now that he needed to speak his as well.
“How can I be with you, with Skadi, with anyone…” he continued softly, the words heavy with doubt.
“…if I am just a rabid monster?”
