There were so many questions, Regan hardly knew where to begin. They came one after another like the first raindrops of a torrential downpour. She started to answer each of them in her mind, drafting and scribbling out before the last one lodged itself in the air. The wolf smelled weakness. It wanted a fight; to break through her skin and bare its teeth. But the human won over, fed by a well-spring of guilt and hurt and unending ire.

“I don’t want you dead. You think I—” Regan was incredulous, almost angry, spluttering before reining herself back in. “If I wanted to hurt you, I would have brought this to Cassian. I would have dragged your and Logan’s names through the mud. But I didn’t. I came to you, because I respect you because I value what you’ve done for me and this kingdom. And as for the rest, for Logan—” Regan said the name as if someone had ripped the bandage off her skin simultaneously.

“Logan used me when he couldn’t have you. Hadrian sent you to Dresmond because I couldn’t be trusted. Grant, to you, is family, while what we have will evaporate the second he gets married. Married to someone worthy.” The words were streaming out, honest and unable to be contained, “I’ve always been second-best—but not this time. Cassian is all that matters now. I don’t want to hurt you, or hate you, but if you expect me to just—just step aside again—”

Regan stopped, feeling the itch in her fingers that could only be cured through counting.

1…2…3.

Alys wasn’t soothed by the words… not fully. Not at the way she said Logan’s name. Not how she spat out about Hadrian. Which made her almost laugh, a bitter cruel one but she sucked it back in. Something about the way she said the word ‘worthy’ made her skin crawl.

“Yet Logan trusted you with this, not me. Hadrian was forced to allow me a part of your pairing with Grant because I am the King’s Witch. Because Cassian said it. Not because he thought you unworthy.” Her voice was calm and low. “And second best? I come home… from a trip that wasn’t meant for me at all… as a replacement for you… to find you at Cassian’s side… granted a position that could overrank me if needed. The second time I’ve had that happen now.” Kennet being the first.

“But if you think I will take a back seat to you with Cassian… to allow you to shove your way between him and myself. You are horribly mistaken. I am the first of our kind,” she stepped forward. Eyes ablaze. “I will fight for this. I offered you the olive branch twice now since this was sprung on me. Cassian is safe with me,” call it territorial, call it possessive. Both could be correct. “So unless he tells me that I am no longer to be at his side, then prepare that I will always be there.”

Straightening her spine her brows flicked together for a moment. “I have been believed to be unworthy of many things in my life Regan. I was a commoner… I was estranged from my family and I know hunger and cold as well as you do I’m sure.” She took her hands slowly out of her pockets and held them in the cold air for a moment as it whipped around them. “I fought for everything I have. I think that makes us worthy of many things, when we know what it’s like to drag ourselves out from where we did. To hold onto such positions that nobles would only dream of because surely commoners were not equipped for such things.” They were the worthy ones.

Regan was only partially listening. Most of her was trying to keep her still-feral wolf in its cage. Alys’s eyes might be burning but so were Regan’s. The amber and copper sprung forward as Alys came closer, burning like candles in the night. The rational was taking a back seat to the animal; the full moon pulling the latter to the surface until it was snarling in her ear, desperate to break free.

But then Alys spoke of being a commoner. Of what it was for them to drag themselves out of the muck. It gave the beast reason for pause. Confused it just long enough for Regan to regain control. To see the sameness….and be stunned by it. Alys would see the confusion. See the amber dwindle in Regan’s eyes until they were dark again.

When Alys finished, Regan just stared at her, jaw clenched as she counted. The silence was filled by the howling wind as it whipped across the wall. Her claws were digging into the palms of her clenched fists hard enough to break the skin. Breathe. Breathe.

If Regan continued on her current path, it would be disastrous. There was enough humanness left in her to recognize that. Her anger transformed to pain—stopping just short of apologetic. But it was something. A start.

“I—” Regan started, swallowing the growl in her voice, “Just don’t know. How this works. I want to trust you but—I just—can’t. I don’t know how much of it is me, how much of it is…her. With the bite, I’ve just gotten…” She was battling both the insufficiency of words and the itch of the wolf beneath her skin, “Paranoid. Posessive. Whichever. And with you, yeah—it’s irrational, I know that, but I just—” She shook her head, “I just had to ask.”

Alys watched her struggle, watched the struggle she knew at least a part of from years ago when this first happened to her. How she had retreated away from everyone that she could have and had only stuck to Cassian’s side. It had caused quite the rift between her and Logan then. And even when she thought she was better, she had still gone crashing into her second form when she went to apologize to the then Captain Commander.

But it was as she seemed to struggle with her words and yet get them out that the older of the two almost softened. Almost. “Then it seems we are in the same boat. I haven’t had to share Cassian like this ever. I don’t know how to handle it… appropriately. It’s why… it’s why I am trying to extend any offering of training.” She bit out the last bit, casting a look towards the sea. “I feel like there… we have enough in common to start. Enough that doesn’t bring up a bad taste in our mouths.” Meaning sitting at dinner and talking about certain topics was perhaps still some time away.

“I want to see Cassian flourish. He has in so many ways,” her gaze flickering back to her. “But he has so much more to come. And for that, I will fight at his side. As I have. No matter if he tries to push me away, if you try to… I am here. For him. For my children. And if… if we can figure this out… for you. I’m here.” And that’s about the best she could voice to the inner stalking of her wolf. Cassian was always alpha to her, always the one the wolf listened to with little hesitation. Only recently had someone else sparked that wolfs attention.

Regan listened. She didn’t understand all of it, but she tried. The parts about Cassian made her bristle. Rationally, she knew Alys was right. That training would bring them closer. That their commonalities outweighed their differences. But Regan’s single, base fear still managed to overshadow logic. Fueled by her animal instincts, the fear of abandonment dominated any other decision she might have made. Her mother had abandoned her. Logan after that. But not Cassian. She wouldn’t allow it.

She did believe Alys meant well. Logically, she did. But the animal continued to bristle. She remembered what Cassian had said. It would take time.

“I know,” Regan answered quietly, for that’s all she could muster. She paused, before saying what she should have said at the start.

“I’m sorry. About Logan.”

Still, Regan refused her. It drove something between them, or perhaps just kept it firmly in place as something had always been between them. Her jaw feathered a moment, ready to end this interaction because she wasn’t gaining much ground besides them seeming to call a cease fire between them. That was… until the apology fell.

Her eyes, wide and brown, went back to the female. A squeeze in her chest at the mention of his name. She wasn’t sure it’d ever go away. Swallowing hard, she then let loose a deep breath. “Me too,” her own apology because she wasn’t the only one to lose Logan. They all did.

“He wasn’t himself… this last… I don’t know how long.” She didn’t know why, why this was coming out now, but it was like someone turned on the hose and had no intention of turning it off. “I tried to undo it, the curse from his first wife. But… curses aren’t meant to be undone. And it was so wrapped around him…” she failed him. Her eyes dropped to the ground and she shook her head. “He was a good father. And I know I’ll always miss him.” A rogue tear fell down her face. Grieving Logan had been hard, and she knew nothing now would change it. But it still tugged on her heart at the thought of him.

Regan didn’t know if it helped or hurt to hear. She watched Alys, jaw clenched, dark eyes soft under her furrowed brow. Regan had shed no tears over Logan’s death. She’d grieved his loss years ago after he’d left his post, and in the time between then and now her grief had hardened into anger toward him. By the time Logan left the earth, to Regan he was already dead.

She stood there quietly, contemplating Alys for a moment, trying to think of something to say that was both true and a comfort.

“There was nothing you could have done,” Regan said quietly, “He loved you. If there was a way out, a way to you, he would have found it. It’s just…it wasn’t there.”

Silence followed, for a long moment before Regan spoke and Alys’ eyes returned to the younger woman. “And now we move forward.” She said it as a way of accepting Regan’s words. That the past was the past, that they potentially would have always wound up where they were with his curse.

“Regan..” she spoke her name, stepping in closer to her. “I am sorry, for what you’ve felt… from Logan… all of them.” She didn’t need to go through the list of who and when. Regan knew. “Todays a new day. And that’s all we can look at now, until tomorrow.” She didn’t know why, but after a moment, an incredulous laugh left her in a quick burst. “That… sounded like an old witch thing to say.” The tension in her shoulders easing up just a bit. Nodding her head as she looked towards the castle, and then Skia beyond.

Regan flinched at Logan’s name as if Alys had raised her hand. It surprised her, how fresh the hurt was after all these years. However unintentional it might have been, Logan had hurt her. It was as if she were a sapling he’d carved his name into, and though she had grown the scar still remained.

But Alys was right. Forward was the only way.

“Nah, it’s just smart,” Regan said with a half-hearted chuckle, “Past is in the past.” She hesitated, growing suddenly still, “And, so long as you agree to do the same, I promise I’ll never speak of it again.”

Logan’s betrayal of his king. His and Regan’s affair. All of it. Regan’s eyes met Alys’s, big and vulnerable and entirely serious.

A heart beat passed as Regan extended her offer. Alys stood before her, if either of the two had anything to worry about with talk of it, it was not her. Not when she had felt so in the dark about what she had been told. But she nodded. “Agreed.”

Dark eyes scanned Regan for a moment, as if trying to place something without asking a question. But she blinked, movement behind the other witch catching her eye as a messenger froze at seeing the two. Sheepishly shifting their weight from one foot to another. “Until next time.” She gave the messenger a nod but waited only long enough to hear Regan’s parting words. Out of… a new respect she was willing to try out.