Her Obsession (by Sheridan Hartin) novel Chapter 116

Sage

He’s dead. The sound of that final wet choke still rings in my ears, but when Winnie pulls the knife free and straightens, the world tilts in a new direction. For a second, I can’t breathe, not from the fight, not from the dirt under my nails, but because something heavy has finally been lifted from the air. Yakov, the man who chewed us up and called it training, is gone. Finished. Winnie stands there, chest heaving, blade slick. She’s shaking so hard I think she might drop it, but there’s fire in her eyes I’ve never seen before. We didn’t all have the same past; she wasn’t broken the way we were. Maybe hers was worse, quieter, gnawing at her from the inside. Watching her do that… she deserved that last strike more than anyone.

I turn and see Conner before I think. He’s walked through the mess, through fallen men and broken branches, straight into the space where I stand. When I run, he’s already opening his arms. I throw myself into him, wrapping legs and arms and everything I have around him, and kiss him so hard the world goes static. He smells like smoke and gun oil and something warm and impossible. “You scare the fuck out of me, sweetheart,” he breathes against my hair, half laugh, half sob. “Fuck, I’m so turned on and scared all at the same time.”

I giggle into his neck, breathless. “Later,” I murmur.

“Later,” he agrees, soft, setting me down gently so I’m on my own feet again.

Around us, people are moving, checking wounds and hauling off the useless hardware. The mood is raw, shocked, and somehow tender. Then someone steps forward from the edge of the clearing, Mikhail. The man who slipped the tray in the morning. His head is bowed low, a sign of submission. He approaches slowly, the remaining guards parting like water. When he stops in front of me, he doesn’t reach for a weapon; he drops to one knee.

“It seems,” he says, voice rough from the cold and the shouting, “that you are the one who ended him.”

It’s not a question. It’s a fact the world can’t argue with.

Mikhail bows his head further, the kind of submission that isn’t theatrical but practical. “If you’ll have me, I offer my service,” he says. “Not out of fear. Out of… respect. If you want to lead, we will follow.”

My stomach sours at the word lead. I scrunch my face like someone has handed me a crown dipped in blood. I don’t want it. I don’t want the responsibility for other people’s lives like that, not that way.

“We don’t want to be bosses,” I say instead, voice softer than I feel. “We don’t want to take over what he made. That’s not what this is about.” I look out at the ring of faces, some broken, some pillars of wrecked loyalty, all of them uncertain as children who’ve been shown the shape of a life and told it doesn’t exist anymore.

“Everyone is free,” I tell them. “Go. Live. Start small. Find a market, a job, a place to sleep without someone watching your hands. If you want normal, try it. If you don’t, if you want to fight, join those who choose to keep fighting. But I won’t be your queen. I won’t replace his throne.”

Murmurs ripple through the group. A few shake their heads; they don’t know how to be normal–a few laugh, bitter and small. Someone asks what “normal” even looks like.

I look back at Conner. He’s watching me with that look he gets when I’m trying to be brave and terrified at the same time. I step close and whisper into his ear, the words for him and him alone: “Would you take them in? The ones who want to?”

He doesn’t even hesitate. His hand finds my hip, warm and steady. “Yes,” he says quietly, but there’s a hard edge beneath it that means he won’t let anyone starve or sleep on the road under his watch. “We make room. We feed them. We teach those who want to learn how to stand together, but we don’t turn them into prisoners. They get a choice.”

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12:04 Tue, Oct 21

Choose.

:

Something like hope, fierce and ugly and unexpected, flares in my chest. It isn’t clean. It isn’t pure. It’s not a fairy tale. But it’s real

We’re not normal. We don’t know how to be. But maybe we can teach each other. Maybe Conner’s family can teach some of them the small things, like a table that’s for everyone, a roof that isn’t a cage, a shower that you don’t have to hide from. Perhaps those who wish to fight will be trained, fed, and guided, while the rest can go and make new mistakes in peace. I squeeze Conner’s hand, and the grip answers back like a promise. The night is full of work ahead, bandages to change, bodies to bury or hand over, routes to clear. But under the heavy sky, with the knife clean and the monster finished, I allow myself the smallest, stupid smile,

I step forward, boots scraping the grass, and push my voice out so it carries over the hush. I want them to hear every word and know it’s

real.

“If you wish to stand with us,” I say, slow and clear, eyes sweeping the ring of faces, “Conner can initiate you into his family. It’s your choice, not an order. No one’s taking your hands and making you kneel. You get to choose how you live.”

Heads turn. Some faces show confusion, others relief, like a hand finally closing around a lifeline. Naomi snorts from my side, a short laugh that sounds like it could crack at any second, and Ari stands rigid, watching every reaction like she’s reading a map.

“We’ll go back to the compound and clear what needs clearing,” I continue. “We’ll hand over what we can to the right authorities where that makes sense. We’ll teach you how to stand on your own two feet if you’re willing to learn. We’ll teach you how to fight and how not to, depending on your choice. If you want to leave and try for normal, do it. If you want to stay and fight, do it. Nobody forces your hand.”

Conner steps up beside me, big and solid, and his voice is a low compliment to mine. “We’re not offering chains,” he says. “We’re offering a roof, food, work, training if you want it and a choice. Family means obligation, but it’s one you choose to take on. No one signs you in without your say.”

Mikhail swallows hard and nods. A few men step forward, hesitant, then firmer: a confession of loyalty, not to a throne, but to the people who pulled them out of the dark. Others shake their heads and drift away, boots crunching into the night, looking for whatever life they can make for themselves.

I tell them finally. “Choose what you want to be. If it’s family, come home with us. If it’s not, go and find your life. Either way, you’re free.”

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12:04 Tue, Oct 21