I'm Aric. The rain has been on me so long I stopped feeling it.
The pump kicks on behind me, and the water in the street drops an inch. She's still down there.
Ona's words are still stuck in my ribs. You look like a man who lost something.
The trouble is I don't know what I had. Only that it's gone.
The others are upstairs in the market room, and Dain has already poured himself two.
Dain: She'll come around. They always come around.
Aric: Shut up, Dain.
Aric: She wasn't angry tonight. She was scared.
Ulric: Scared? She told four Alphas to go fuck themselves in front of the whole valley.
Aric: And then Veyla put her hand on a wound and squeezed.
Aric: We stood in that market and let the town laugh at her like she was the joke.
Aric: That was us. We did that.
Dain's cup stops halfway to his mouth, and the joke dies right there.
Dain: I kissed Veyla right in front of her. Fuck.
Talon: She looked afraid. I saw it and I said nothing.
Talon: Her hands were shaking when she turned her back. I just let her walk.
Ulric: So she's scared of us. Good. Scared is smart.
Aric: No. Scared is what we did to her. That's not the same as respect.
Aric: A bond doesn't make us owed. It makes us responsible.
Aric: Right now we're the reason a woman with blood on her sleeve thinks she's a joke.
Dain: So what do we do? Ride out there and say sorry?
Aric: No. An apology from a man who hasn't changed anything is just noise.
Aric: We earn her trust. Slowly. Like men who plan to still be here next year.
Ulric: And if she says no?
Aric: Then she says no, and we live with it.
Ulric: I don't know how to do that. Nobody ever made me earn a damn thing.
Aric: Then learn. Same as the rest of us.
Talon: She kept this whole town dry for six years. Nobody came down those stairs.
Talon: Not one of us even knew her name.
Aric: Now we know it. So we act like we know it.
I pull my coat off the hook. It's still dripping on the boards.
Outside, the street is dry and quiet, and the pump house light burns green under the hatch.
She's down there fixing things nobody thanks her for.
Aric: Tomorrow. All of us.
Four men who take what they want, and not one of us knows how to ask.
Fine. I'll learn. She's worth being bad at it for a while.