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My father's smile widened.

"Good boy."

He reached for the rose and held it toward me across the desk, offering it stem first. The thorns were sharp and untouched.

"Take it," he said. "I don't imagine you'll be needing to leave any more of these."

I took the rose from him.

One thorn pierced the pad of my thumb. I felt the pressure first, then the sting, but I did not flinch and I did not look away from him. I had never given him the satisfaction of watching me react when I could help it.

"I'd rather she hated me alive," I said.

It was the only completely honest thing I said in that room.

My father laughed as though I had made a joke.

I did not return to Fenhall afterward.

Instead I went north, taking the longer path through the dark physic garden, past the Glasshouse, and through the narrow postern gate near the foot of the Lantern Tower. Frost covered the strip of grass beyond the wall. The marks my claws had torn into the ground during the storm were still visible, softened by weather but not yet gone.

I stopped beside them.

Her window was lit above me. A low gold glow spilled through the narrow casement, which had been left open a few inches despite the cold.

I did not need to see her to know she was there.

Her scent drifted down from the tower with the night air, faint but unmistakable. Salt from her skin. Soap. The clean metallic trace of blood where the swan had cut her, already fading as the wound healed. Beneath it all was the scent that belonged only to her, the one my wolf could have found anywhere.

The bear was with her.

The bond had already told me what had happened between them. I had felt it while I stood outside in the frost, as the unmistakable rise of her pleasure traveling through the connection between us. I had felt it build and finally break, and afterward I had felt the quiet satisfaction that settled through her body while another man remained beside her.

I had stayed where I was because I had given up the right to do anything else.

Then a sound reached me through the open window.

It was faint at that distance, though my hearing still caught it clearly enough: a low, tuneless hum coming from somewhere inside the room.

Silas.

I knew the sound.

He had made it from the benches that afternoon when my wolf had taken over, using the rhythm to draw her attention away from me and bring her back to herself. Weeks earlier, I had heard her use that same sound to calm his bear.

Now I understood.

She had taught it to him.

He was giving it back to her while she lay beside him, helping her sleep.

The wolf pushed hard against my control, but I did not allow it to make a sound. The last time I had stood beneath that window, I had bitten through my own lip to keep myself silent. I could still feel the ridge of scar tissue when I ran my tongue over it.

So I stayed there without moving.

I held my father's rose in one hand, the thorn still lodged in my thumb, and listened to another man comfort her in a way I no longer had the right to.

Eventually, I turned away.