Page 62 of The Right to Bear Claws
Around them, the nightmare landscape transformed. Not into something artificial or forced, but into what it might have been if Tobias had chosen healing over harm, connection over isolation. She could feel his resistance, centuries of accumulated bitterness fighting against the possibility of change.
But she could also feel something else—a tiny spark of the man he'd been before pain had twisted him into somethingthat fed on others' suffering. The healer who had once stood in moonlit gardens, using his gifts to mend broken bones and ease troubled minds.
"I remember," he whispered, and his voice was different now. Not the hollow echo of an ancient nightmare, but the broken confession of someone who had lost his way and forgotten the path back to light. "I remember what it felt like to heal instead of harm."
"Then choose it," Kaia said simply, still gathering pieces of Elias while her transformed realm blazed around them. "Choose healing. Choose hope. Choose to let the pain transform you instead of define you."
The ancient warlock was quiett, his presence wavering between the monster he'd become and the healer he'd once been. Finally, with a sound that might have been a sob, he spoke.
"I've been what I am for so long that I've forgotten what anything else feels like."
"Then let me show you." Kaia extended her hand toward him, just as she had in his memories of Elara, but this time with no expectation, no demand. Just an offer freely given. "Let me share what I've learned about belonging, about forgiveness, about the kind of love that doesn't require you to be perfect."
As Tobias reached out with trembling fingers to accept her offer, Kaia felt the last piece of Elias's consciousness settle into her awareness. Still scattered, still damaged, but whole enough that she could begin the delicate work of helping him remember how to be himself.
The realm around them had gone quiet, no longer collapsing but not yet stable. Transformed by hope but not yet healed, waiting to see what choice the ancient warlock would make.
And in her arms, carried by love across impossible distances, the fragments of her mate's awareness began to pulse with the familiar rhythm of his heartbeat.
31
ELIAS
Consciousness returned like sunlight breaking through storm clouds, slow and gentle and impossibly warm.
Elias became aware of several things simultaneously: the soft grass beneath his back, the familiar scent of Moonmirror Lake, and the steady rhythm of his own heartbeat pounding in his ears. But most importantly, he felt Kaia's arms around him, her fingers threading through his hair while she whispered words he couldn't quite make out.
"Hey," he said softly, his voice rough from whatever ordeal they'd just survived. "Did we make it?"
Her violet eyes snapped open, wide with relief and something that looked like wonder. "Elias? Oh god, you're really back. I wasn't sure... when I was putting you back together, some of the pieces were so scattered..."
"Putting me back together?" He sat up carefully, noting that they were surrounded by his family and what looked like half the town. Magnus knelt beside them with tears streaming down his weathered face, while Finn and Thorin flanked them like protective walls.
"Your consciousness was shattered," Kaia explained, helping him find his balance as the dream realm's effects slowly faded from his awareness. "Tobias hit you with everything he had, tried to scatter your essence across the void. But our bond... it kept the pieces connected, gave me something to follow when I went looking for you."
"And Tobias?" Elias asked, though part of him already knew the answer from the profound peace that seemed to have settled over the lake.
"Gone. Not destroyed, but... transformed. Released." Kaia's expression grew thoughtful, tinged with something that looked like awe. "In the end, he chose to let go. Chose healing over hunger, peace over the desperate need to feed on others' pain."
"How?" Magnus asked quietly, his patriarch's voice heavy with the weight of centuries spent protecting their community. "How did you manage to redeem something that ancient, that consumed by its own darkness?"
"I didn't redeem him," Kaia said simply. "I just showed him what redemption could look like. Gave him a choice between continuing as he was or letting go of the pain that had trapped him for so long." She looked down at Elias with eyes that held depths he was only beginning to understand. "But I couldn't have done any of it without all of you."
"What do you mean?" Lucien asked, emerging from the crowd with his usual feline grace. The panther shifter looked exhausted but curious, his green eyes bright with the kind of intellectual fascination that came after surviving something unprecedented.
"The power I used to rewrite his realm, to anchor us back to the waking world... it didn't come from me alone." Kaia gestured toward the assembled crowd. "It came from every connection I've made here, every moment of acceptance, every act of lovefreely given. From Miriam treating me like a daughter, from Twyla's protective meddling, from Maeve's gruff loyalty."
"From the Vane clan holding the anchor while I was gone," Elias added, understanding beginning to dawn. "From the Night Guard maintaining protective watches, from the Tansley brothers crafting ward stones."
"From an entire community that chose to love a stranger simply because she needed love," Magnus said softly. "That's what defeated him, isn't it? Not power or force, but the kind of connection he'd forgotten was possible."
"Connection he'd never really experienced in the first place," Kaia corrected. "Tobias spent his mortal life being useful but never truly accepted, valued for his gifts but feared for his difference. When Elara betrayed him, it just confirmed what he'd always suspected about himself."
"That he was too different to be loved," Elias said, his bear rumbling with understanding and a trace of ancient sympathy. "Christ, when you put it like that, it's amazing he lasted as long as he did before the isolation drove him mad."
"Which is why what happened tonight matters so much." Varric Thornwell stepped forward, his silver braids gleaming in the moonlight as he studied Kaia with ancient eyes. "You didn't just save yourselves or even our town. You proved that redemption is possible for anyone willing to choose it."
"Even after centuries of feeding on nightmares," Twyla added, appearing at the edge of the crowd with a thermos of what smelled like her famous calming tea. "Even after becoming the very thing that once terrified you."
