Page 58 of The Right to Bear Claws
"Yes, but?—"
"Then why would I be frightened of someone who chooses to heal rather than harm?"
The courtship that followed was a blaze of happiness so intense it almost burned Kaia's consciousness. Six months of pure joy, of feeling accepted and understood, of believing that maybe, finally, he'd found someone who could love all of him.
The proposal scene made Kaia's heart ache with vicarious emotion.
"Marry me," Tobias said, kneeling in the same garden where they'd met. "Let me spend my life protecting your dreams, ensuring that your sleep is always peaceful, that your waking hours are filled with joy."
"Yes," Elara whispered, tears beginning to form. "Yes, a thousand times yes."
But then came the night that changed everything.
Kaia experienced it from Tobias's perspective, felt his confusion and growing horror as Elara woke screaming from a shared dream that had been meant as a gift.
"You were in my mind," she gasped, pressing herself against the far wall of their bedroom. "You were inside my thoughts, changing things, controlling?—"
"I was showing you beautiful dreams," he said desperately. "Visions of our future together, of the children we might have?—"
"You were in my head without permission! Manipulating my thoughts, making me see things that weren't real!"
"But they could be real. We could build that future together?—"
"How can I trust that any of my feelings are my own? How can I know which thoughts come from me and which ones you've planted there?"
The accusation destroyed him, and Kaia felt his world shatter in that moment. Everything he'd thought he understood about their connection crumbled under the weight of her fear.
"I would never manipulate your feelings," he said, but she was already backing toward the door.
"You just did. You invaded my dreams without asking, changed them to show me what you wanted me to see. How is that not manipulation?"
The argument that followed was vicious, desperate on both sides. Tobias trying to explain that he'd meant it as a gift, a sharing of his deepest hopes. Elara trying to make him understand that intention didn't matter when the result was violation.
"I can't stay with someone who has that kind of power over me," she said finally. "I'll never know if what I feel is real or if it's just another dream you've crafted."
"So you're leaving me? Just like that?"
"I'm protecting myself. And maybe I'm protecting others too." Her expression hardened with resolve and fear. "The village elders were right to be concerned. You're too powerful, too dangerous. Someone like you shouldn't be walking free among ordinary people."
The betrayal that followed was swift and brutal. Elara going to the authorities with tales of dream invasion and mental manipulation. A mob forming outside his home, torches and pitchforks and voices raised in righteous anger. The frantic flight into the woods, pursued by people who'd once sought his healing but now saw him only as a threat.
"I should have listened to my instincts," he snarled as he prepared the ritual that would take him into the dream realm. "I should have known that acceptance was just another lie, another trap."
The crossing itself was meant to be temporary, just long enough for the furor to die down. But Kaia could feel how the realm changed him, how the isolation and bitterness began to warp his perception of reality.
Years passed in the dream realm, then decades, then centuries. She watched as he forgot the joy of healing, as his powers twisted from protection to predation. The first time he fed on someone's nightmare instead of banishing it, she felt his shock and self-loathing.
"Just this once," he told himself. "Just until I'm strong enough to return, to face them on equal terms."
But once became twice, twice became habit, and habit became nature. The bitter poison of isolation had done its work, turning a gifted healer into something that fed on the very fears he'd once sought to cure.
"This is what love gives you," he'd whispered after centuries alone. "This is what happens when you trust someone with your heart. Better to take what sustenance I can from fear—at least it's honest in its intentions."
Now, experiencing the full weight of his transformation, Kaia understood why her words about love and acceptance had enraged him so much. Not because he didn't want them, but because he'd trained himself not to hope for them.
"You see now," Tobias said, his voice echoing through his memories. "You understand why your pretty stories about belonging mean nothing. Love is just fear wearing a prettier mask."
"No," Kaia said firmly, pulling back from the depths of his despair. "Love is what happens when someone sees all of you and chooses to stay anyway."
