He told me everything.
Two years. Her name before her name was familiar. The eastern outer territories, where she had been stationed for her pack's agricultural coordination. The way they had found each other in the specific way people did when they were both competent and in the same radius — not arranged, not designed, just real.
He told me what it had been.
Not performing the telling and not diminishing it either. Just the accurate version — which was what I had asked for and which was what he gave me.
"Did you love her?" I said.
A pause.
"I thought I might," he said. "I didn't know it clearly enough to call it that." He held my eyes. "And then Celeste was introduced and I made the choice I made and it ended." He paused. "She left Kaelthorn three months after. I didn't know why. I
