"It's better than nothing!" My cheek hurts. My hand hurts. He's got blood smeared across his shoulder and I'm still holding this stupid flower stem. "I cut one of them! I was fighting back!"
"And losing! You were losing, Melori!"
"So what? So I should stay inside forever? Ask permission every time I want to—"
"YES."
"That's INSANE."
"That's SURVIVAL."
"That's a CAGE!"
"It's a cage that keeps you ALIVE!"
"I don't WANT to be kept alive like some fragile thing you have to—"
"You ARE fragile!" He gestures at me, wild, blood flicking from his hands. "You're human! You can't fight them off when they grab you!"
"Don't call mefragile."
"You ARE. Look at you." His breath ragged. Blood everywhere. Flowers crushed between us. "They almost had you. You almost died because you wanted to make thingspretty."
"I wanted to make things BETTER!" My tongue catches on the word, still raw where I bit it, and I shout anyway, voice going so high it hurts my own ears. "That's what I DO! I see problems and I fix them! The food was a problem—fixed it. The supplies were a disaster—fixed. Everything looking like mud ISa problem—"
"So you get yourself killed? That's your solution?"
"Obviously I wasn't TRYING to—"
"You went into the forest ALONE!"
"Because I didn't think I needed PERMISSION to pick FLOWERS!"
"Two nights ago!" His voice breaks open on it, raw and wrecked. "I stood in a stream and told you to stop acting like you're leaving and you just—walked out here like none of it—"
"This is the other direction! These were humans, not wolves—"
"IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT DIRECTION!" He's shaking now. Not just anger—
"You're human. You can't shift. You can't run fast enough—"
"Then what am I supposed to DO?" My voice cracks. The flower stem drops. My hands need something to hold and there's nothing. "Sit in my dwelling all day? Stay inside the lines you've drawn?"
"YES."
"I won't LIVE like that!"
"You won't live AT ALL if you—"
"That's MY choice!"
A laugh. Low. Not a good one.
"No." He steps closer. Tree at my back, his body blocking everything else, blood-slicked and furious and not wearing a single thing and my brain picks now—right now—to—
"Not anymore."
"You can't just DECIDE—"
