Doesn't cover himself or step back or look away. He's just standing there, bare and scarred and bleeding from a wound on his forearm, every mark visible—the silver lines crossing his chest and arms, the missing eye, the torn ear. Three swords mid-strike. He doesn't even look at the swords.
He looks at the men.
The young one with the patchy beard. The older one with his blade still raised. The boy between them.
Looks at them with his one eye and doesn't hide.
We don't reveal ourselves.
His voice hard with certainty. Shut the debate down. Shut everyone down because control was all he had left.
And now he's standing naked with swords because they were running at me.
My throat closes. My vision blurs—tears,shit, not now—and my hands are shaking and the knife is still in my grip and I'm looking at the back of him, the scars I know, the ones I've touched, his back, the shoulder that has my mark—
He can't take it back. Everyone will know. He's standing there and he can't undo it—
I can't breathe.
The older one's sword is still raised but his arms are shaking now. The young one has gone white.
"What—" The young one. Voice cracking. "What ARE you?"
Keer says nothing. He doesn't need to. The answer is standing in front of them, bleeding and human and not attacking.
"It was—" The older one. His sword arm is still up. Won't come down. Won't go higher. "That was a WOLF—"
"Put it down." The young one. Barely whispering. "Garrett. Put the sword down."
"It was a WOLF—"
"He's a MAN. Put the fucking sword DOWN."
Five heartbeats. Six. The sword lowers. Slow. Shaking.
The clearing has gone quiet around us. Not silent—there's still fighting at the edges, still steel and snarling somewhere in the trees—but here, in the center, around this naked scarred man they're forgetting how to hold, everything has stopped.
He's shaking. I can see it—the fine tremor running through his shoulders, down his arms, into the fists at his sides. The control it's taking him to stand here bare and human and not fight. Everything in him wants to fight. Shift back. Attack. Take control.
But he's standing still.
Chapter 25
Another wolf sees what Keer has done.
Near the edge of the clearing—a young woman. I know her—treated a gash on her arm once, and she flinched when I touched her, wouldn't look at me. She's in wolf form now, standing over a body, bloody, panting. She looks at Keer—naked, human, standing in front of swords—and her whole body changes. I watch the decision move through her. The terror. The resolve.
She shifts.
Fur pulling back. Body rising. Naked, shaking, blood on her face and chest. She grabs a broken sword from the ground and holds it in front of her with both hands. Terrified.
The human near her steps back. Stares.
"Oh—oh gods—"
Then another. A young man near the center, barely out of boyhood. Shifts mid-stride, stumbles, catches himself. Ribs showing. Blood running from a cut on his shoulder. Shaking so hard he can barely stand.
The soldier across from him drops his sword. Just opens his hand and lets it fall.
