SACRIFICE

AUTHOR’S POV 

Lydia prepared a warm meal for them, and the survivors found clean clothes that could be altered to fit their small bodies.

The youngest girl fell asleep almost immediately after eating.

Another child began crying when someone offered him a blanket, and Nora quietly wrapped it around his shoulders.

Finn refused to eat.

He sat with his back against the wall, his injured leg stretched out in front of him, watching every person who entered the room.

When Elena approached with a bowl of broth, he turned his face away.

"I'm not hungry," he muttered.

"You haven't eaten since yesterday."

"I said I'm not hungry."

Elena placed the bowl on the small table beside him.

"All right. I'll leave it here."

He glanced at her suspiciously.

"You're not going to make me eat?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Because forcing you to eat won't make you feel safer. But the food will be here if you change your mind."

She sat down a short distance away and began sorting a packet of bandages.

For several minutes, neither of them spoke.

Then Finn asked, "Where are my parents?"

Elena's hands slowed.

"I don't know."

He stared at her.

"Can you find them?"

"I can help look when it's safe to do so."

"That's what everyone says."

His voice was flat.

Elena looked at him carefully.

"Have people promised to find them before?"

Finn's jaw tightened.

He turned away.

She did not press him.

Instead, she reached for a small wooden cup and filled it with water.

"You don't have to tell me anything you're not ready to tell me," she said. "But I want you to know something. You don't have to be brave every minute of the day."

Finn remained silent.

"You can be scared. You can cry. You can be angry. None of those things make you weak."

His fingers curled into the blanket.

Elena recognized the gesture. It was the same one she had made countless times when trying to hold herself together after Kaiden's rejection.

The instinct to hide pain.

The belief that if she let anyone see how much she was hurting, they might use it against her.

She wondered what Finn had endured before finding himself alone in that ruined school.

She wondered how many nights he had spent listening to strange noises outside the classroom, convinced that the next person through the door would be something that wanted to hurt him.

She could not undo those memories.

But she could give him a place where he did not have to face them alone.

Elena moved the bowl of broth a little closer.

"I'm going to stay here for a while," she told him. "You don't have to talk to me. You don't have to let me touch you. I'll just sit here."

Finn watched her for a long time.

Then, slowly, he reached for the bowl.

He took one cautious sip.

Elena pretended not to notice.

He drank another.

By the time he finished half the bowl, his shoulders had begun to relax.

When she checked his bandage later, he flinched but did not pull away. When she adjusted the blanket around him, he allowed her to do so.

And when exhaustion finally overtook him, he fell asleep with one hand curled around the edge of her sleeve.

Elena stayed beside him.

She sat on the floor until the fire burned low, listening to his breathing and watching the tension gradually leave his small face.

Luma stirred quietly within her.

He trusts you.

Elena looked down at the sleeping boy.

He's frightened.

Those things can be true at the same time.

She gently freed her sleeve from his fingers, then placed her hand over his.

For years, Elena had believed that the bond between mates was the most powerful connection the Moon Goddess could give two wolves.

She had believed it because she had felt the bond with Kaiden, had felt the certainty of belonging to someone before he destroyed that certainty with a single declaration.

But sitting beside Finn, watching a child who had been abandoned by circumstances beyond his control finally find enough safety to sleep, she began to understand something else.

A bond could be broken.

A promise could be betrayed.

A person who should have protected you could choose to walk away.

But kindness did not need a bond to exist.

And family did not always begin with blood.

Sometimes, it began when someone stayed.