“I’m not sure there’s much back there for you either, Geraint.”  It was honest.  He would go back the witches who did not care about him, who would use him over and over again for their own purposes.  She wished she could prevent that somehow, but she was really in no position to give him a way out.  Silence fell between them for a moment, but her hand remained on his shoulder.  “Even if I went out on my own, outcasts don’t last long.  I might manage better than most, I might find work as a mercenary...But I feel like I’ve gotten more than enough blood on my hands for people that did not deserve my loyalty.”<br/><br/>Did Geraint deserve her loyalty?  Her concern?  Had anyone really ever shown concern for him in his lifetime?  Even if these lives they lived were brutal, Vara thought everyone deserved at least that much.  That’s what packs were meant to be, a group of people who cared and worried.  Families that made use their kin was protected.  Geraint had a pack out there, a mother and a father, and they had given him up to the witches.  It seemed so wrong to her.<br/><br/>Vara looked down at him, her soft-blue eyes heavy as she did, and an impulse overtook her.  It would have been better to stop herself and finish the conversation, figure out a plan for their next steps, but everything seemed so delicate right now.  Like it would break under the weight of a feather.  Vara bent down to one knee and she dipped her head to press her lips to Geraint’s.  It was a kiss that embodied the word she had mentioned moments before, tender, but after a few seconds it turned hungry and desirous.  When she realized what she had done, she pulled back and her eyes searched his face.  “I don’t think there are any real heroes left in this world, just a people trying to do what they think is right...”