Page 33 of Torgash

"All for a fucking piece of bread I took when I hadn't eaten in three days." Each word comes out harder than the last, decades of suppressed rage bleeding through. "That's your precious humanity, Nova. It hunts and it hurts and it breaks children for sport. Don't you ever mistake me for that."

The confession strips away everything I thought I knew about him. I see him differently now—not just the controlled predator, but the child who survived unspeakable cruelty.

"So don't you dare," he continues, stepping closer, using his size to intimidate, "call my compassion human. Don't reduce what I did to some pale imitation of the species that tried to break me."

"That's not what I meant," I say quietly, holding my ground despite every instinct screaming at me to retreat. "I wasn't trying to—"

"What you meant doesn't matter." His jaw works like he's physically fighting for control. "What I am, what we are, isn't measured by how closely we resemble our oppressors."

For a moment, we stand locked in tense silence. His breathing is harsh, controlled, like he's fighting not to lose himself completely to whatever memories I've just triggered.

When he speaks again, his voice has dropped to something rawer. More honest.

"When an orc shows mercy, it's not because we learned it from humans. It's despite everything humans tried to teach us." His eyes hold mine, burning with conviction. "What I did for the Bauers? That's not human kindness. That's who I choose to be when no one's watching, when there's no reward. When it costs me something to care."

"You're right," I say finally. "I'm sorry."

The apology catches him off guard. Some of the tension bleeds from his shoulders, though wariness remains in his eyes.

"I shouldn't have called it human," I continue. "What you did for them was all you. Your choice. Your compassion." I pause, searching for the right words. "It was good because you're good, not because you're imitating something else."

Something shifts across his expression—surprise, maybe relief—like he's been waiting his entire life for someone to see the distinction.

Then his expression shuts down completely. "Don't make me into something I'm not."

"I'm not making you into anything." I step back, giving him space to breathe. "I'm just saying what I saw."

He swings his leg over the bike, the engine roaring to life beneath him. "Stay behind me on the way back. Road construction's got traffic fucked up."

The subject change is abrupt and final. But as he pulls out of the parking lot, I catch something in his eyes, not gratitude exactly, but acknowledgment. Like maybe, for just a moment, he let himself believe that someone sees him as more than the monster he's convinced himself he is.

I follow him through Shadow Ridge's winding streets, but my mind isn't on the road. It's on a ten-year-old orc child, starving and desperate, being permanently marked for trying to survive. The way his hand trembled with barely controlled rage when hetried to make me feel his scar. How I pulled away from his pain instead of accepting it.

The careful balance of power and gentleness I witnessed in that courtroom feels different now. He wasn't just wielding intelligence like a weapon against injustice, he was protecting people the way no one had ever protected him.

That's when I notice the sedan.

We're stopped at a red light when it registers in my peripheral vision. Black, tinted windows, hanging back just far enough to avoid obvious surveillance. I might have missed it completely if not for the past week of hypervigilance, but I had been too lost in thought to catalog every vehicle like I should have.

The light turns green. Ash pulls forward. I follow, checking my mirrors.

The sedan follows, too.

Three blocks later, it's still there. Someone who doesn't want to be seen.

I tested my theory by suddenly taking a right down Maple Street instead of following Ash toward the station. In my rearview mirror, the sedan hesitated, then followed.

Definitely tailing me.

My pulse quickens, but I keep my speed steady, mind racing through options. Radio for backup? Santos is covering dispatch and is already spread thin. The irony of needing rescue from the very surveillance I've been rejecting all week isn't lost on me.

Instead, I test the sedan's intentions. Another turn, this time down the residential street that leads toward my apartment building. Still following, but hanging back, deliberate in its distance.

Just surveillance, then—information gathering, like the black sedan Santos described last week. Uncomfortable but not immediately threatening.

Then we hit the dead stretch between downtown and my building, and everything changes.

The sedan accelerates.

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