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"You fight like a toddler," Kenji muttered through a swollen lip.

"And you fight like you think you own what is not yours," Blaidd shot back with a bruised jaw.

A long, heavy silence.

Then Kenji huffed a reluctant laugh. "This does not mean I am giving up."

Blaidd grunted. "You can try, but the only way you'll get with Fae is over my dead body."

The hostility did not vanish.

The grumbling remained, the insults continued.

But they began to resemble banter more than war.

So Blaidd continued his pursuit, with Kenji watching for his chance.

***

Blaidd in wolf form was massive—dark and impossibly obvious.

He followed Fae during her runs through the forest, loping at her flank like a lovesick fool. When she darted ahead, he matched her pace, and when she slowed, he slowed.

The young black wolf still growled; the white fox still snapped.

Blaidd ignored them both.

Sometimes Fae would accelerate suddenly, trying to shake him, but he never chased aggressively, simply kept up like a bodyguard.

When she stopped at the ridge overlooking the valley, breath misting in the cold air, his great body would lower beside her without touching. Close enough that their fur brushed when the wind shifted. And slowly, against her will, his presence stopped feeling like an intrusion and more like something else entirely.

He learned the rhythm of her days and adjusted himself around them. If she rose early to gather wood, he had already stacked a small pile by her workshop door. If rain threatened, he mended the slight leak in her veranda roof before she noticed it. When frost settled thick on the ground, he swept the path to her door before dawn so her bare feet would not sting. And his wolf howled to be let in at night. He was like her living hot-water bottle. They spent the full moon together, but somehow, it was enough to just hold hands. When the moon's influence had her sliding a hand up one muscled, tattooed arm, he caught it gently and regretfully shook his head before pulling her into his lap. She could feel how much he wanted her as his hardness pressed against her buttocks.

"I asked the elder at the village…we can get through this by just touching each other. We don't have to do anything more. I never want you to do more until you are ready," he said before hesitantly kissing her forehead and cuddling with her on the narrow pallet, which groaned under their combined weight. Later, when he thought she was asleep, she heard him sigh and murmur, "Trust me, Fae. I will do anything..."

After the full moon, he continued to take care of her in small, subtle ways.

He did not mention any of it, but she knew what he was doing.

If she asked, he shrugged.

"It needed doing."

When she worked long hours at the woodshop, he brought jasmine tea and the rice cakes she liked because he had finally managed to convince the lady at the restaurant that he came in peace. He had paid attention and knew when she didn't like something.

They began to speak for longer stretches—never about the past but about practical things.

"If I were to return north," she said one evening, sanding a smooth edge along a carved panel, "I would not go back to that house."

He nodded immediately.

"We could build something new," he said. "Wherever you wish."

She gave him a sideways look. "And if I wished to stay here?"

"Then I would stay here with you," he answered without hesitation. "You are my home."

They spoke of her opening a small shop one day—her name above the door. Blaidd listened as she described shelves of carved boxes, toys, delicate inlays shaped like running wolves and foxes.