Page 59 of The Right to Bear Claws
"Coming from someone who hasn't lived long enough to be truly betrayed."
"You're right. I haven't lived as long as you, haven't suffered as much." She turned in the memory-space to face him directly. "But I have lived long enough to learn the difference between one person's fear and everyone's capacity for love."
"One person's fear destroyed my life."
"One person's fear destroyed your faith in yourself," she corrected. "But Tobias, what you did to Elara—entering her dreams without permission—that was wrong. Not because you're a monster, but because consent matters even in relationships built on love."
His form flickered with rage. "She claimed to love me?—"
"And she did. But she also had the right to privacy in her own mind, the right to dreams that were hers alone." Kaia's voice gentled. "You made a mistake, Tobias. A big one, born from loneliness and the desperate need to be understood. But making a mistake doesn't make you irredeemable."
He scoffed. “Look what I became. Look at the centuries of fear I've fed on, the lives I've touched with nightmares?—"
"I see someone who's been in so much pain for so long that he forgot what healing felt like." She reached out, not with judgment but with understanding. "Let me show you what I found in Hollow Oak. Let me show you what acceptance actually looks like."
Before he could refuse, she shared her own memories. The moment Twyla had welcomed her with genuine warmth despite sensing the darkness that clung to her. Miriam treating her like a beloved daughter without knowing anything about her past. Maeve's gruff acceptance and protective loyalty. The way an entire town had rallied to keep her safe not because she'd earned it, but because that's what communities do for their own.
And Elias. Elias who'd known she was his mate from the moment he touched her but had courted her slowly, gently, respecting her even when his bear demanded immediate claiming. Who'd followed her into this nightmare realm not to control or possess her, but to stand with her in the darkness.
"This is what love looks like," she said as the memories flowed between them. "Not perfect, not without mistakes or misunderstandings, but consistent. Present. Willing to do the hard work of understanding rather than demanding immediate acceptance."
The memories swarmed Tobias, and she felt his ancient defenses beginning to crack under the weight of genuine affection freely given.
"Stop," he whispered, but there was less conviction in his voice now.
"I won't stop," she said firmly. "Because you deserve to remember what hope feels like. You deserve to know that isolation isn't your only option."
Around them, the shadow-cocoon began to shudder, hairline fractures appearing in the walls he'd built from centuries of pain. Light seeped through the cracks—not the harsh light of judgment, but the warm, steady glow of possibility.
But even as his prison began to crumble, Kaia could feel his resistance hardening into something desperate and dangerous.
"You don't understand," he snarled, his form becoming more monstrous as fear overtook hope. "I am what I chose to become. I am what love made me. And I will not be unmade by your naive dreams of redemption."
29
ELIAS
The shadow-cocoon was coming apart like tissue paper in a hurricane.
Elias watched in fascination and growing alarm as cracks of golden light spread across the walls of Tobias's prison, each fracture releasing centuries of compressed anguish into the surrounding dream realm. The entire structure groaned under the weight of emotions too long denied, and he could feel the foundation of the nightmare domain beginning to buckle.
"Kaia," he called, his voice cutting through the chaos as she remained locked in communion with Tobias's memories. "Whatever you're doing, it's working, but this whole place is about to come down."
She didn't respond, too deep in the ancient warlock's past to hear him. Through their bond, Elias could feel echoes of what she was experiencing: centuries of pain, betrayal, and the slow corruption of a soul that had once tried to heal the world. But he could also feel something else building in the realm around them, something desperate and dangerous.
"I will not be unmade," Tobias's voice roared from everywhere at once, the words carrying such force that severalnearby memory-fragments shattered like glass. "I am what I chose to become. I am what love made me. And I will not be destroyed by hope I can no longer feel."
The golden light that had been seeping through the cracks suddenly blazed brighter, and Elias realized with horror that Tobias wasn't trying to heal or redeem himself. He was preparing to drag everything down with him in a final act of spite.
"Kaia, we need to go," Elias said urgently, moving toward her still form. "Right now."
But even as he spoke, the realm around them began to collapse in earnest. Not the gradual crumbling he'd expected, but a catastrophic implosion as Tobias chose destruction over redemption. Walls of crystallized nightmare dissolved into chaos, and Elias felt the pull of something vast and hungry trying to drag them deeper into whatever void lay at the center of the ancient warlock's despair.
"If I cannot have peace," Tobias snarled, his voice now coming from the collapsing structure itself, "then no one will have it. If I cannot be redeemed, then redemption itself is a lie that deserves to die."
Kaia's eyes snapped open, violet depths wide with shock and grief. "He's going to destroy everything," she gasped. "Centuries of accumulated pain and power, all released at once. It'll tear holes in the barriers between realms."
"Can you get us out of here?"
