The White Werewolf || Season One: Ties That Bind

Chapter Seventy

"Yes," Nenneked replied simply, waiting for him to elaborate.

"I wanted to be a hero," he remembered. "But the way the girl and her father reacted made it clear that I would be treated as anything but that. It taught me not to interfere. To mind my own business and do my job, nothing more. Not that I don't have a code. You know I do. But it doesn't change what I am. I've killed every monster there is, and it's difficult. There's a reason witchers are necessary to face such beasts. It's endless drudgery with very few rewards, and even less thanks. And for the longest time, that was just my life. Loneliness. The feeling of always being utterly abandoned by the world with no solace in sight."

Nenneke watched his eyes glaze over as he continued to speak. It was like he wasn't with her in the temple at all, but reliving a very powerful memory instead.

"The day I met Robin, Nenneke, she saved me. Literally. I was hunting a cemetaur, the most deadly necrophage there is. A challenge to defeat, even for a witcher."

He hesitated as he realized what he was about to reveal, but Nenneke waved her hand dismissively. "I know she's a necromancer, Geralt. I can sense it, and I don't begrudge her for it. It's her natural talent. She's clearly not a bad person. Any power can be evil in the hands of the wrong user."

"Thank you. I often worry about her being discovered. Being a mage with a witcher is suspicious enough, but a necromancer with one? They'd string her up for less."

"You're stalling, Geralt."

He sighed and nodded. "She stopped the cemetaur in its tracks. Held it in place so I could take care of it easily. And that was before she was a trained, disciplined mage. I can't imagine what she's capable of now. She tries not to use necromancy unless she has to. But even then, she made it one of the easiest kills I'd ever experienced."

"And then," he admitted, "even after I abandoned her, because that's just what I do, she protected me. Told a mob looking for both of us that she didn't know where I'd gone, even though she could have easily pointed them in my direction."

His muscles tensed as he remembered the mob's threats. "It was my fault that she was in trouble, so I went back to rescue her. I expected her to be angry with me for brushing her off and leaving her behind, but instead she was... worried about me. She tended to my wounds. She cooked for me. She wasn't afraid of me, like so many people often are."

"Then she invited me into her bed." Nenneke grinned as the witcher actually blushed. "Because she wanted to choose me, Nenneke. And after, she stayed in my arms."

"She treated you like a person, not a witcher," Nenneke acknowledged.

"I know that dragging her with me isn't reasonable, Nenneke. But as long as I have an excuse, I will. She makes me feel like the hero I always wanted to be. When I'm with her, I don't have to be an old, hated witcher. I don't have to be the Butcher of Blaviken. I'm simply... Geralt. A man, warm in bed with a woman who he..."

He bit his lip and stopped. He couldn't say the word to anyone else. Not if he couldn't say it to Robin.

Nenneke glossed over his unfinished sentence. "Yet you're troubled," she observed.

"Yes. Fate vexes me," he confessed.

"Which is why you won't submit to my trance, I suspect."

"You suspect correctly."

"Are you so afraid of what fate has in store for you?" Nenneke wondered, staring into the distance at the figure she'd summoned telepathically.

He inhaled and his head shot up. Robin was in the garden. He could smell her.