Quaritch had survived worse than her stare.

Barely.

He stopped a few steps from her, hands open at his sides in a gesture that felt foreign on him. The marks on his skin, the scent of another territory, the truth of Varang lingering like smoke—he knew she saw all of it. The silence pressed in.

“It’s not what it looks like,” he said, then winced at his own words. He scrubbed a hand over his jaw and tried again. “Okay. It’s… some of what it looks like. But it wasn’t betrayal.”

He took a breath, steadying himself the way he did before a fight. “Varang kept me alive. That’s it. Alliance. Survival.” A beat. Quieter. “I came back to you.”

Her expression didn’t change.

Quaritch swallowed, shoulders squaring with stubborn resolve. “Say something. Yell if you want. Just—don’t look at me like I already lost.” He stepped closer, careful, deliberate. “I crossed hell to get here. I’m not walking away now.”

The forest held its breath.

And for the first time since he’d learned to live in blue skin, Quaritch understood that this was the fight that mattered most—and there were no tactics for it, only truth.