"?????????'? ??????"

Days passed. Then a week. I had expected something to change, for the illusion of safety to shatter, but it never did. Nathan never raised his voice, never locked me in, never punished me for speaking. He gave me space when I needed it and instructions when I asked. It was… strange.

I still didn’t trust him completely. After all, he had been just like the men who had hurt me. But unlike them, he had walked away from it. He had chosen something different. That fact unsettled me.

I spent my days adjusting to this new life. The house—simple, hidden away—was unlike the camp or even the cabin my mother and I had once lived in. It was bigger, but not extravagant. Isolated, but not suffocating.

I had my own room, my own clothes, my own space. And yet, at night, I still dreamed of the cages.

I awoke one evening, my heart pounding from yet another nightmare. The man’s hands around my throat. The cold iron bars pressing into my back. The sound of Mila crying.

I shuddered and forced myself up, wrapping my arms around my legs. The moonlight filtered through my window, casting shadows along the wooden walls. I couldn’t stay in bed.

Carefully, I crept downstairs. Nathan was there, sitting near the fireplace with a book in his hands. His gaze lifted the moment he heard my steps, but he didn’t say anything.

I hesitated before walking forward, settling into the chair across from him. I didn’t know why I was here. Maybe the silence of my room had become too much.

For a while, neither of us spoke.

Then, finally, I broke the silence.

"You never told me your name," I said, my voice quiet.

Nathan looked at me for a long moment, then closed his book. "Nathaniel. But people call me Nathan."

Nathan. The name felt foreign on my tongue.

"You didn’t ask before," he added.

I shrugged. "Names didn’t mean much in the camp."

He nodded, as if he understood. Maybe he did.

I studied him in the dim firelight. There was something about him that still unsettled me. Not because he was cruel—he wasn’t—but because he was something else. Something I couldn’t quite place.

"You're different," I said, narrowing my eyes. "Not just because you freed us."

Nathan leaned back slightly, exhaling. He was quiet for a moment before speaking. "I suppose I am."

A flicker of something ran through me. A memory—something familiar in his gaze, in the way he moved.

I sat up straighter. "You’re an anomaly too, aren’t you?"

He didn’t react immediately. But the way his jaw tensed, the way his fingers gripped the armrest just a little too tightly—it was enough.

I inhaled sharply. "You are."

Nathan ran a hand through his hair and sighed. "Yes."

I stared at him. The man who had bought us. The man who had freed us. The man who had taken me in. He was one of us?

"Why…?" My voice was barely a whisper. "Why did you—why did you live like them?"

Nathan’s eyes darkened. "Because I had to. If they knew what I was, I would have been in a cage just like you."

His words hit me harder than I expected. He had lived among them. Pretended to be one of them. But he had never truly been one of them.

I swallowed. "Then why free us now?"

His expression softened. "Because I was tired of standing by."

I didn’t know what to say to that. For so long, I had seen all men as monsters, as people who wanted to control, to hurt, to use. But Nathan… Nathan was something else.

He had been like them, but he had chosen differently.

I leaned back in my chair, staring at the fire. My world had changed again. I wasn’t sure how to feel about it.

But for the first time, I wasn’t afraid.