Page 5

But during those precious moments when it was just the two of them, she saw into the man in the dark.

Raw, like a veil had been torn away. Fierce, with something dangerously close to need.

"Fae," came his tortured whisper, as if asking for absolution.

And each time he took her with that intensity, she had hoped that something in him might finally give way. That the walls he lived behind would fracture. That the man who existed only in the night would follow her into the dawn.

But morning always came.

Her eyes burned from staring at a tapestry on the wall as she remembered the way he always rose quietly at dawn after a night of passion, already pulling himself back together, piece by piece. By the time he sat at the breakfast table, he was once more composed, distant, his scars neatly sheathed beneath solid walls. If he had held her through the night—if she had felt him linger in sleep—it never carried forward.

By daylight, he belonged elsewhere.

To the alpha. To the pack. To the careful rebuilding of defences she was never meant to cross. He belonged to everyone but her.

And she had learned, over time, to swallow the ache that followed him out the door, telling herself not to hope for what he had never once promised. Even as part of her had never quite stopped waiting.

She pressed the moccasins closer to her chest, eyes burning with useless salty tears which defied her, and she let herself grieve one last time for the hope she was finally burying.

Sighing, she got back to packing. She added her book of techniques in woodwork, its pages thick with sketches and notes—her uncles tutoring, her own careful observations, refinements, and corrections gathered over years of work. Every margin bore her hand, every diagram marked by trial and error.

Her favourite tools were carefully stored in a leather tool roll.

She had carefully wrapped each piece in a length of cloth and tucked the bundle into a small tool bag. The familiar weight kept her going.

Then she knelt and reached beneath the bed, fingers closing around smooth, familiar wood. She drew out a long, narrow box and lifted the lid.

Inside lay her sickle.

It was far larger than any harvesting blade, its blackened metal etched with runes that caught the light in quiet, watchful lines. Magic had been carved into its layers by her uncle, as he had spelled that her swing always hit its mark. The curve of the blade echoed a darkened new moon, lethal and beautiful in equal measure.

Her uncle's indulgent voice rose in her memory. He had taught her how to move with it, how to let its weight work with her. He had taught her how to step inside an enemy's reach and strike once, clean and final. Seconds were all it took, he had said. Hesitation is what killed.

Her uncle had given it to her on the night of her Moon-Claiming—the sacred turning when the Moon Goddess first marked her as woman, when the sky hung heavy and bright above the packlands, and she had bled for the first time. Twelve winters old, and already trusted with a tool that could both reap and defend. She traced the curve once with her thumb, a quiet prayer to the Goddess passing between skin and steel, then wrapped it carefully.

She lifted it with care and swung the leather harness over her shoulders, settling the weapon across her back where it had always belonged. It rested between her shoulder blades, a promise and a warning. It wasn't an ornament, but a defence. She adjusted the straps until the balance was perfect before taking it off and resting it beside the bed.

On top of everything, she placed the gardening book her nana had given her, the spine worn soft with use, its margins crowded with careful annotations.

A yowl cut through the quiet.

There was the click of a wooden box opening, and a heartbeat later, a small shape wriggled free from beneath the bed and launched itself into her lap.

Fae caught the little wildone instinctively, pressing her face into the soft, striped fur. Cats and wolves did not usually mix—it was said their natures clashed, their instincts forever at odds.

She smiled faintly at the old belief. Feraal had never cared for rules.

She had found the wildone at a woodwork fair—half-hidden in shadow, watching her with unblinking dark eyes from within a large carved box she had no intention of buying. The price had been ridiculous, but the craftsmanship was exquisite. And something in her chest had gone tight with anticipation the moment her fingers brushed the lid. She still didn't know why she had paid without haggling, why she had carried it home like a treasure.

Inside the box had been the toy: an articulated wiggle-cat, carved from pale wood, jointed so finely it flowed like a living thing. Someone had attached real fur along its spine—soft, striped, eerily warm to the touch.

The first time it moved two weeks later, she had nearly leapt out of her skin.

It was just a twitch, a subtle flex of wooden joints. Then an indignant ouch-you-ouch in her mind when she had experimentally tugged at the fur in blind panic.

She had screamed as she dropped it and carefully backed away.

It hadn't followed, and she thought she had imagined it.