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His eyes searched her face, as if unable to believe his ears. Fear sat on his chest, as he envisioned a future where Fae would separate from him.

"Can you not give me another chance?" he asked in a desperate whisper.

The plea lay bare between them. His eyes hid nothing of his despair.

"Let me try," he said hoarsely. "Let me be the mate you deserved from the beginning. Let me—" His voice broke. "Let me give you children. Don't leave me behind." His breath shuddered at the thought. "I won't survive it."

Fae blinked hard, fighting the burn behind her eyes. "I know," she said softly. "I know you suffered. More than I did."

She touched her temple with two fingers rough with calluses. "And here," she said, voice unsteady, "here, I understand. I know you didn't have a choice."

"But Blaidd—" Her breath hitched as her hand fell back to her lap. "How am I meant to forget how you ran for the hills again and again like a coward? I was only eighteen. I didn't know what I had done wrong. You left me to cope with children you had with another woman. Don't you know most she-wolves wouldn't have tolerated them?"

He flinched, but she did not stop.

"All those times you used my body and then disappeared," she continued, quiet and precise, each word chosen with anger threading through them. "As if touching me disgusted you. As if I were something to endure rather than the lifemate you should have cherished."

Her chest threatened to crack wide open at the memory.

"All those years I hoped for a child," she whispered. "Someone to love. Someone to hold when the pain of not being enough to keep you became too much."

Her burning gaze never left his. "I thought it was my fault," she whispered. "That my body was broken. That I was lacking. There was no one to reassure me."

A tear slipped free despite her efforts to hold them at bay.

"But it was you who was lacking, you who let me down," she said simply. "It was you all along."

The lies felt like an unsurmountable barrier between them.

Blaidd did not reach for her. He did not argue or defend himself. How could he?

He only bowed his head. It took everything within her to stop herself from extending her hand and stroking his shorn hair.

"In my mind," Fae continued, "I know I should forgive you." Her fingers tightened together in her lap, knuckles whitening. "But my heart had already given up, Blaidd. On you. On us. On ever being happy. I have settled for being content."

She drew a slow breath.

"I bore it for eight years," she said. "I raised those children. I tried to love them because I believed they were yours. Because I believed that loving them was part of loving you. I hoped, by seeing how I accepted them, someday you would see me."

Her voice wavered, just slightly. "I listened to them say I was the reason their mother died," she whispered. "Over and over again. How I was less."

She looked at him then with resolve in her eyes. "And you ran. You left. You went on quests and vanished, leaving me to hold everything together."

"Eight years, Blaidd," she said, her eyes shining, but she did not let the tears fall. "And you couldn't even meet my eyes. You couldn't say my name."

The silence pressed close.

"How," she asked softly, "do I make my heart understand that those eight years were a price I had to pay for something that was not my fault?"

Her breath shivered as it left her body.

"You escaped," she said. "But where could I go?"

Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Who was I meant to turn to?"

She drew herself inward, heart armouring itself with quiet finality.

"You dealt with this in your own way," she said. "And I am sorry you had to go through it. Truly." She met his eyes, steady now. "But I was not the one who did this to you."