Reclaiming Pack

[Thalia]

Nimeda had meant the ardency of Sierra’s search, the way the two women had been talking with urgency and precision, focused on the goal of a single person like the weight of the world depended on it. Perhaps that was what pack was for the kin: a unity that did not require words, understanding that their lives were braided like rope, that a loss for one was a loss for all. She’d intended a compliment by speaking of love’s strength. But she had unwittingly pressed on a bruise. She felt it keenly in the clipped answer, and the shrug which brushed the whole suggestion away afterwards. Nimeda looked at Sierra anew, and realised then that she had not found a bruise. She was the bruise.

Her head tilted, thoughtful. She did not perceive the restraint as weakness, and if there was hurt it was not anything which Nimeda had the power to soothe. No apology rose in answer, and no shame either. Just acknowledgement of a veiled confession that came with no invitation to pry. “Love always matters. Even when it does not take the forms we would wish, or stay when we need it most.” Her voice was soft. It wasn’t a lecture; it was something older, more personal and raw, offered woman to woman if Sierra would accept it from her.

Her thoughts turned inward. She knew fractions of a past so ancient it perhaps mattered to no one but Nimeda any longer. Grief that lingered beyond mortal bounds. Sins that stained long after the blood was washed clean. But attachments too. Loyalties chosen true at every fork in the road. Love that learned the shape of a heart and never let go. Surprisingly it settled something in the hollow places of her; reminded her that this was an island now, not the prison it had once been.

“I have loved him a long time,” she said eventually, surprised by the self-revelation and how clearly the truth plucked free with so little effort. Nimeda was an emotional creature, but she rarely named such things without prompting. It was usually in others she searched for truth, not her own depths, and not for herself. Her fingers pressed over her heart. No mark remained there, but something had changed when Tristan’s fingers had passed through it. It wasn’t what she was feeling for now, though – just the warm beating of the heart underneath, not quite mortal, but living now. “But it does not mean he is mine, then or now.”

It was choice, not chains, which mattered most. Especially with him. Claiming otherwise was possession, not love. Sierra’s choices were also her own: Nimeda would not question them, nor presume those feelings were so easy to sweep aside as she implied. Her expression softened. She did not name the Grey Lady’s prophecy; it was not her place to reveal secrets which were not her own, and nor did she know what it meant anyway. But she remembered it then: a promise of family and belonging she hoped he would finally find. A place that sheltered from the war inside, fought between wolf, and troll, and man. It would not be taken from him this time. For nothing bound Nimeda, either.

Her gaze fell to the fallen red petals from her crown, and she plucked one from her lap. It was soft, fragile.

“Thank you,” she said then. “If he does not remember to say it, Sierra. Thank you for looking for him.”

He’s pack. She already felt the shape of Sierra’s response. But Nimeda was not wolf, and she had no pack. Her gratitude was for the woman.