Chapter 891: Initiation Ritual

Ragnora took a long breath before continuing,

"And then there’s my personality. Every man wants a wife who is humble. Obedient. Someone who will listen and follow. But me?"

She laughed bitterly.

"I’m a commander. I give orders for a living. I crush S-class threats before breakfast. Do you honestly think any man would want to try to ’tame’ someone like me? Most of them are too scared to even meet my eyes."

She held up her hand, ticking off points.

"Even putting all of that aside, there’s my reputation. Everyone in the Holyfield mines either fears me or worships me."

"Men don’t look at me and think ’I want to hold her hand.’ They think ’I hope she doesn’t notice me’ or ’Please assign me to a different squad.’"

She let her hand drop onto the table with a heavy thud.

"So no, Cassius. To answer your question—there is no partner out there for me. There never has been. There never will be."

"I’m a woman in love with the idea of romance, and that’s the closest I will ever come to experiencing it myself."

Silence hung between them.

Inside Cassius’s mind, however, it was anything but silent.

It was a tempest!

’She thinks her muscles are unattractive?!’ His thoughts screamed. ’Those incredible, powerful arms that could crush stone and tear monsters apart—she thinks they’re a FLAW?!’

’Does she have any idea how magnificent she looks when she wields that sword!? The way her muscles ripple with every swing!? I want to trace every single one of them with my fingers. I want to feel that strength pressed against me!’

’And her skin! Her SKIN! She called it demonic. DEMONIC! As though that’s a bad thing! It glows like a sunset. Like rubies. Like the most precious thing I’ve ever seen!’

’ And those scars—she thinks they make her ugly? They make her look like a WARRIOR!’

’I want to kiss every single one. I want to learn the story behind each scar and then show her how beautiful I find them!’

’And godammit her personality—she thinks men want obedience? Obedience?!’

’I’ve spent my entire life surrounded by people who bowed and scraped and never dared to challenge me.’

’But she COMMANDS armies! She gives ORDERS! She could probably pin me to the ground with one hand and I would THANK her for it! Dominant women are—!’

He forcibly stopped himself before his thoughts could spiral further into frankly inappropriate territory.

But the indignation burning in his chest didn’t subside.

Every single thing Ragnora had listed as a flaw, Cassius saw as a treasure.

Every self-deprecating word she’d spoken made him want to grab her by those magnificent shoulders and shake her until she understood how absolutely, devastatingly desirable she was.

But he didn’t.

Because Cassius was, despite his many flaws, good at reading people.

And he understood that this wound went much deeper than surface-level insecurities.

If he simply blurted out how attractive he found her, she wouldn’t believe him.

So instead, he asked a follow-up question.

"What about other ogres?"

"What?"

"You said humans wouldn’t be interested, and I suppose I can understand why a human might be intimidated. But what about male ogres?"

He looked at her curiously.

"Strength is valued among your people—you mentioned that yourself. Wouldn’t an ogre warrior seek out a powerful mate? Someone who could match him? You’d think a strong female ogre would be considered a prize."

Ragnora’s expression flickered with something Cassius couldn’t quite identify.

"That’s...a logical thought." She admitted slowly. "But it doesn’t work that way. Not for me, at least."

"Why not? Is it because of your coloring? Your height?"

"Neither of those, actually. While they are unusual, they aren’t the biggest factors." She raised a hand to her face. "The real problem is what you’re looking at right now."

Cassius stared at her, genuinely confused.

"My face." Ragnora explained. "It’s...not ogre enough."

"What do you mean?"

"The titan bloodline, it changed my appearance in ways that are apparently quite noticeable to other ogres." She traced the lines of her jaw. "My features are too refined. My eyes are too slender. My face is too...human. To an ogre, I don’t look like one of them. I look like a massive human woman who happens to have horns and red skin."

She shrugged helplessly.

"Ogre beauty standards favor women who look distinctly ogre. Broad features. Pronounced teeth. A certain...bulkiness to the face. I have none of that. To an ogre male, I’m not beautiful—I’m strange. Uncanney. Even ugly, by their standards."

Cassius had to physically restrain himself from saying something he might regret.

The idea of anyone calling this magnificent woman ugly made him want to find those individuals and demonstrate exactly what happened to people who insulted the women he cared about!

"For humans." Ragnora continued. "The problem is the opposite. My face might pass for attractive enough, but everything else..."

She gestured at her massive body, her muscle- corded arms, her towering height.

"...is the dealbreaker. No human man wants a wife who could pick him up and carry him under one arm."

"And so between the two." Cassius said quietly. "You’re rejected by both."

"Effectively, yes. The overlap between ’people who find my face attractive’ and ’people who find my body attractive’ is..." She smiled wryly. "Vanishingly small. Ninety-nine percent of potential suitors are eliminated by those two factors alone."

"But there’s still one percent." Cassius pointed out. "Ninety-nine isn’t a hundred. There has to be someone out there who—"

"No." The word was flat. Final. "There isn’t."

"You don’t know that."

"I do know that, Cassius." Ragnora’s voice was firm now, brooking no argument. "I have spent my entire life watching how people look at me. And I’ve gotten very, very good at reading those looks."

She held up her hand and began counting.

"Fear. I see that one constantly. People are afraid of me—of my power, my size, my reputation."

"Awe. Similar to fear, but more positive. People are impressed by me. They respect what I can do."

"Admiration. Especially from my soldiers. They look at me like I’m some kind of legend come to life. It’s flattering, but it’s not love."

"Protectiveness. Strange as it sounds, some people look at me and want to shelter me—though those are mostly Big Sis’s old friends who still see me as that orphaned girl she took in all those years ago."

"Gratitude. From the families here, the miners, the people whose lives I’ve helped protect."

She lowered her hand.

"But the one look I’ve never seen? Not once. Not in all my years?"

She met Cassius’s eyes.

"The look of someone who is in love."

Her voice cracked slightly on the word.

"I know exactly what that look is supposed to be, Cassius. I’ve studied it.the tenderness in the eyes. The softness around the mouth. The way the rest of the world seems to fade away when two people in love look at each other."

She shook her head.

"I have never, not once seen that look directed at me."

Cassius’s throat felt tight. "Ragnora..."

"And before you suggest otherwise." Ragnora continued sharply. "I have seen men look at me with hunger. With ambition. Particularly noblemen."

Her expression hardened.

"They look at me the way a hunter looks at a rare trophy. They don’t want me—they want to conquer me. To be the one who managed to tame the great Commander Ragnora and have me kneeling at their feet so they can boast about it to their peers."

Her voice dripped with contempt.

"That’s not love. That’s ego. And I have no interest in being anyone’s conquest."

Cassius was quiet for a long moment. "What about Lady Florence? She must have told you—"

"Big Sis told me I would find someone eventually."

A sad, fond smile crossed Ragnora’s face.

"She was relentless about it, actually. She kept trying to set me up with suitors. She’d find some nobleman or knight or merchant who she thought might be suitable, and she’d arrange a meeting, and..."

"And?"

"And the moment they heard my name, they’d politely decline."

Ragnora laughed, but it was a hollow sound.

"Every single time. No matter what Big Sis offered them, no matter how she tried to persuade them, they’d find some excuse. A prior engagement. A sudden illness. A journey they needed to take. Anything to avoid meeting me."

Cassius felt a strange mixture of emotions—relief that none of those meetings had worked out, and fury at the cowards who had rejected her without even giving her a chance.

"A few did come." Ragnora admitted. "But they were fans, not suitors. They wanted to meet me, shake my hand, maybe ask for my autograph."

She sighed. "That’s not the same thing."

"So Lady Florence’s efforts never—"

"Never succeeded." Ragnora’s expression grew distant. "But for a while, she gave me hope. She made me believe that maybe there really was someone out there."

"Someone who could look at me and see..."

She trailed off.

"See what?" Cassius prompted gently.

"See someone worth loving."

The words hung in the air between them, fragile and raw.

"Then one day." Ragnora continued, her voice barely above a whisper. "Everything changed. And I realized that hope was nothing but a fantasy."

Cassius felt his chest tighten. "What happened?"

Ragnora was silent for a long moment. Then, slowly, she began to speak.

"I received a letter. There was no sender’s name on it. It simply said to come to the training field at sunset. Alone."

She took a sip of tea to calm her nerves.

"I thought it was a challenge. That happens sometimes—warriors from across the continent hear about me and want to test themselves. I’d gotten dozens of such letters before."

"So I grabbed my sword and went to the training field, expecting a fight."

Her voice turned gentle.

"But when I arrived, there was no challenger waiting. There was just a young man. A new recruit. Human. He’d joined the Blood and Iron Brigade only a few weeks earlier. I recognized his face but didn’t know his name."

Cassius knew where this was going. He could feel it in the pit of his stomach.

"He was nervous. Trembling." Ragnora said with a weak chuckle. "I thought maybe he was sick, or injured, or..." She shook her head. "I asked him what was wrong. And then looked up at me with this fierce, determined expression and he..."

"...he told me he loved me."

She let out a breath.

"He said he’d loved me from the moment he first saw me on the battlefield. That every time he watched me fight, his feelings grew stronger."

"He promised he couldn’t focus on his training because all he could think about was me. And finally he’d finally worked up the courage to confess because he couldn’t keep it inside any longer."

Cassius’s fists clenched beneath the table.

"I was..."

Ragnora paused, searching for the right word.

"Overhelmed. Completely, utterly overwhelmed. I’d come expecting a battle, and instead I’d received a confession. The thing I’d been waiting for my entire life, happening right in front of me."

"For a solid minute, I couldn’t even speak. I just stood there, frozen, my heart pounding so hard I thought it might burst."

She smiled, but it was the saddest smile Cassius had ever seen.

"And then—then I started to feel it. Hope. Real, genuine hope. The kind of hope I’d thought had died years ago. I thought, ’This is it. This is the moment Big Sis always told me would come. Someone sees me. Someone really sees me.’"

"What did you say to him?"

"I was about to tell him that I didn’t know him well enough yet. That we should talk more, get to know each other, take things slowly...that I was open to the possibility."

"But...I didn’t get the chance to say anything."

Ragnora’s voice hardened.

"Because before I could open my mouth, I heard laughing. Laughter coming from all directions. And suddenly, soldiers were pouring out from behind the barracks, from behind the equipment sheds, from every hiding place you could imagine."

"Dozens of them. My soldiers. My own men and women."

She closed her eyes.

"They were slapping the recruit on the back, congratulating him. ’You actually did it! You’ve got balls of steel, kid! Confessing to the Commander—that’s the bravest thing I’ve ever seen!’"

"And the recruit—he was laughing too."

"He was laughing with them. And one of the older soldiers said, ’Welcome to the Blood and Iron Brigade, boy. You passed the initiation. Everyone goes through it. We dare you to do the scariest thing imaginable, and if you actually go through with it, you’re one of us.’"

Cassius felt sick.

"It was a prank." Ragnora said hollowly. "An initiation ritual. Every new recruit goes through something similar—a dare, a challenge, something to prove they have the courage to belong."

"And that year, the dare was confessing to me. Because telling the Commander you loved her was apparently the most terrifying thing anyone could possibly do."