I stopped. Looked back.
He was standing in the center of the arena. Golden light still flickering around him. The hero of a story that had gotten considerably more complicated since I'd shown up.
"Whatever you are." He said it slowly. Choosing words carefully. "Whatever you're hiding. It's going to come out eventually. And when it does, you're going to need allies."
"I have allies."
"You have women who share your bed." His voice wasn't cruel. Just honest. "That's not the same thing."
He wasn't wrong.
The women in my life had chosen to stand beside me despite knowing what I was. Mera and Cheon and Noel and Aurora and Laurana. Even Usagi, who was still figuring out what she wanted from this arrangement. They were loyal and brilliant and dangerous and mine in ways that mattered more than any formal alliance.
But Nolan was talking about something different.
