"It was during the time when the other warrior members of the tribe and I were preparing for an attack," he continued, his voice steady but carrying an undercurrent of old pain. "We had set up a trap that would have killed the arriving troops. We would have won that portion of the war."
I found myself holding my breath, sensing that whatever came next would be important.
"But one of us betrayed us and sold the information about our trap to the commander of those troops." His hand tightened slightly around me, the only sign of his inner turmoil. "While we were unaware of it all, we waited with our warriors at the place where we'd set the trap. Those Empire troops never came."
The silence stretched between us, heavy with implication.
"Instead, they took a different route," Javrian's voice dropped to barely above a whisper. "They went to the village where our families waited. And they killed everyone—children, women, and old people. Brutally."
My heart stopped.
The magnitude of what he was describing crashed over me like a tidal wave. An entire village.
Innocents who had trusted their warriors to protect them, only to be slaughtered while those same warriors waited uselessly at an empty trap.
Because someone had betrayed them.
Finally, Javrian's silver eyes shifted down to meet mine. In that gaze, I saw something that made my chest tighten painfully—moonlight and steel, beauty and deadly purpose, pain that had been carried for far too long.
When he spoke, his voice was sharp enough to cut, directed at me with an intensity that made me understand this wasn't just a story.
This was a test.
"So now that you've heard the story," he said, each word precise and weighted, "do you think that woman deserves forgiveness?"
I kept looking, my crimson eyes moving between the faces around me. I didn't have words to say—not yet.
Glancing back toward Sally, I observed the yellow wolf's body language, which clearly showed guilt. Her small form was pressed low to the ground, head down, one paw clenched into the dirt as if trying to dig herself deeper into the earth.
I blinked slowly. I wouldn't have spoken on this matter if not for Javrian himself telling me the truth, clearly showing that even if not the others, he treated me like someone who should know all this.
And strangely enough, it felt like that was enough. His trust in me was more than enough.
I didn't know the answer yet, but somehow, he felt far closer to me than anyone else could be… and that was a mystery I wanted to know, but not yet.
I looked toward Vera, someone who seemed the most level-headed of the group. "So exactly what happened that day? Tell me."
Now that I was involved in this matter, I wanted to hear the same story from another person's mouth.
I was aware that when truth is spoken, it's often biased by perspective, mixed with the emotions carried by the person speaking it.
From Javrian's words, it clearly sounded like his own emotions were behind it—those of a leader carrying impossible burdens.
"Didn't he already tell you?" Lila interrupted sharply, her pale eyes flashing with irritation.
I simply called out, "Javrian."
He turned that piercing silver gaze toward Lila, who tried to clarify. "Javrian, don't you hear? She's trying to scratch at our wounds—"
But his stare silenced her completely.
Looking at his face, I felt that familiar confusion about why this man was going so far for me.
But then again, who knew what ulterior motives he might have? I decided not to care.
My principle was simple: if you cannot get the answer no matter what, there's no reason to make your mind busy with it.
I looked back toward Vera. "Please."
Vera started to tell the story. She recounted the same events Javrian had described, but from a different angle.
"That day, before the night of the trap, Sally and the others shared all the details with me. She was our interrogator—she had gone to talk to a prisoner we'd captured. After speaking with him, she came and reported, as usual, what the prisoner had revealed to Javrian, letting us understand that troops were coming that we could handle."
Vera's gray eyes grew distant with the memory. "Sally had suggested we should evacuate our people from the village, but there was anger among the members about leaving our home. Still, she followed Javrian's orders to proceed with the trap plan."
Her voice grew heavier. "The next day, after we returned to the village empty-handed, we saw the heads of our clan members hanging from poles. The village was burning. Everything was destroyed. Everyone was dead."
Vera's hands clenched into fists. "It was then that Sally revealed she had colluded with the Empire's troops and sent a message to their arriving army. Javrian threw her from a cliff in his rage. He could have killed her, but..." She stopped there, glancing at Javrian. "Due to their past bond as packmates, he showed restraint. But we couldn't do anything more—we'd already lost too many people, and Empire reinforcements were arriving."
When Vera finished, all of them looked toward me expectantly.
They found me with my eyes closed, appearing to sleep.
Lila's mouth twitched with rage. "I told you this woman just wanted to rub salt in our wounds—"
But before she could complete her angry outburst, I murmured softly, my eyes still closed:
"So Sally, you sacrificed tribe members to save Javrian and the other warriors' lives?"
The words hit the group like a mountain crashing down on them.
The silence that followed was so complete it seemed to swallow all sound from the mountain night.
Even the wind stopped whistling through the peaks.
Vera's gray eyes went wide with shock. Kael's massive frame went rigid. Darius made a strangled sound.
And Lila… Lila's face went through a series of emotions—confusion, denial, then a dawning horror as my words sank in.
"What?" she whispered, her voice barely audible.
I opened my crimson eyes slowly, meeting each of their gazes in turn. My expression was that same matter-of-fact calm that had become my signature.
"Think about it logically," I said, sitting up straighter in Javrian's arms. "Sally was your interrogator. She spoke to the prisoner and learned about the Empire's plans—naturally, I can see she had that strange ability to make someone utter truth. But she also would have understood your capabilities better than anyone."
My gaze drifted to the wounded yellow wolf, who had raised her head to stare at me with wide, shocked eyes.
"If the trap had worked as planned, how many Empire soldiers would have died?" I continued. "And what would have been the Empire's response to losing an entire battalion to a wolf ambush?"
The pack members exchanged uncertain glances, beginning to see where my logic was leading.
"Total extermination," Javrian said quietly, his silver eyes fixed on my face with growing understanding. "They would have sent ten times as many troops to wipe out every wolf settlement in the territory."
I nodded. "But if Sally betrayed the trap location, the warriors would survive to fight another day. The village…" My voice softened slightly. "The village was going to be destroyed either way. But this way, at least the core fighting force lived."
Sally's small wolf form began trembling, not from cold or fear, but from something deeper.
"You made a choice," I said, addressing Sally directly. "Save everyone and doom the entire tribe to genocide, or sacrifice the defenseless to preserve those who could continue fighting."
Tears—actual tears—began flowing from Sally's yellow eyes.
"The trolley problem," I murmured, almost to myself. I wasn't being particularly clever to notice the pattern; it was just that they were too emotionally broken by betrayal to see through the fog. So, I recalled one of the strategies from my past.
"Do you pull the lever to kill one person instead of five? Do you sacrifice the many to save the few who can save others later?"
Lila's legs gave out, and she collapsed to her knees on the rocky ground. "No… no, that can't be… she betrayed us for money, for—"
"She said that because she was guilty too and wanted to go to her grave with that guilt," I finished. "But Javrian spared her life, and naturally, after falling from the cliff, she must have been taken by slave merchants—from whom she didn't try to run, due to… obvious guilt."
'!'
'Haah.' I breathed, clearly noticing so many gazes toward me, and hearing the hiccup of Sally. But I sighed; I couldn't say more.
I wasn't good with the emotional expression, and especially I needed to give these people time to adjust.
I just turned, burying my face into Javrian's chest.
Shame was the last thing I had, as he was soothing and warm, unlike the bonfire that was hot.
With my eyes growing heavy and slowly falling into sleep, I declared to myself—
'Sigh, if only instead of this tough surface, I could have a soft bed.'