Mate Me in Moonlight

Chapter 122

POV: Adeline

The war was over, but its wounds remained.

I saw them everywhere now that I knew how to look. The young warrior who flinched at sudden sounds. The mother who couldn't sleep, who paced the compound at night like a ghost. The elder whose hands shook when he tried to hold a cup, though his body bore no visible injury.

The healers could mend torn flesh and broken bones. But the damage that lived in the mind, in the spirit—that required something different.

That required someone who understood.

I found Marcus in the healing hall's quietest corner.

He had been one of our fiercest fighters—a wolf who had held the eastern flank when it seemed certain to fall, who had pulled three wounded packmates to safety under a hail of enemy attacks. But now he sat hunched on a cot, staring at nothing, his eyes holding a distance that had nothing to do with the room around him.

"May I?" I gestured to the space beside him.

He nodded without speaking. Without really seeing me.

I sat. Let the silence stretch. Elara had taught me this—that sometimes presence mattered more than words, that healing began with simply being there.

"The healers say I'm fine." His voice was rough from disuse. "My wounds closed. My strength returned." A pause. "They don't understand why I can't—"

He stopped. His jaw tightened.

"Why you can't stop seeing it," I finished quietly. "Why closing your eyes brings it all back. Why the silence feels louder than the fighting ever did."

His head turned. For the first time, he actually looked at me.

"I know," I said. "I understand."

The words weren't empty comfort. They were truth, pulled from the deepest part of me—from the girl who had walked through Ash Hollow's ashes, who had carried her dead in her heart for years.

"I survived the destruction of my pack," I continued, my voice steady even as the memories pressed against my chest. "I found the bodies of wolves I loved. I watched everything I knew burn to nothing. And afterward..."

I let out a breath.

"Afterward, I couldn't speak of it either. The words wouldn't come. It was too big, too terrible. I thought if I opened my mouth, if I let any of it out, it would swallow me whole."

Marcus's hands had stopped trembling. He was watching me with something raw in his expression—recognition. The desperate relief of someone who had believed themselves alone in their suffering.

"You carry it," I said. "What you saw. What you did. What you couldn't prevent. You carry it, and it's so heavy you don't know how to move forward."

His eyes filled with tears. The first, I suspected, since the battle ended.

"I keep seeing their faces." The words broke from him like water through a cracked dam. "The ones I couldn't save. I hear them screaming, and I wake up reaching for weapons that aren't there, and I can't—I can't make it stop—"

I reached out and took his hand. He gripped back hard enough to hurt.

"You don't make it stop," I said gently. "Not all at once. Not completely. It becomes part of you—the grief, the guilt, all of it. But part of you isn't all of you. There's still room for other things. For healing. For living."

He was crying now, tears streaming down his weathered face. A warrior who had faced death without flinching, finally allowing himself to feel what he had been running from.

I held his hand and let him grieve.

"How did you survive it?"

The question came after the tears had slowed, his voice scraped raw.

I considered the answer carefully. This wasn't the time for platitudes or easy reassurances. He needed truth.

"One day at a time," I said. "Sometimes one hour. Sometimes one breath. I didn't try to carry all of it at once—I couldn't. I just carried what I could, and when it got too heavy, I set it down for a moment. And then I picked it up again."

"But how? How did you find the strength?"

I thought of Aiden. Of Freya. Of the pack that had taken me in when I had nothing left to offer.

"I didn't do it alone." The words were simple, but they held everything. "I let people help me. I let them see me broken, and I trusted them not to look away. That was the hardest part—harder than the grief itself. Letting someone else carry part of the weight."

Marcus was quiet for a long moment.

"I don't know how to do that," he admitted.

"You just did." I squeezed his hand. "You just started."

When I left the healing hall, the sun was setting.

Marcus would need more than one conversation. More than one afternoon of tears and truths. The road ahead of him was long, and there would be setbacks, dark nights when the memories pressed too close. But he had taken the first step. He had let himself feel. Let himself be seen.

Healing spread that way. Not in dramatic transformations or sudden recoveries, but in small moments of connection. In hands held and stories shared. In the slow, patient work of carrying each other's burdens until they became light enough to bear.

I walked back toward the compound, thinking of all the other wolves who carried invisible wounds. Tomorrow, I would sit with them too. Listen. Share. Remind them that survival wasn't a solitary act.

Slowly, one wolf at a time, we would heal.

It wasn't fast. It wasn't easy.

But it was spreading.