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“I notice it.” Against her hair. “There’s a difference between monitoring and noticing.”

“Is there.”

“Monitoring implies distance.”

“And we’ve established you don’t have that.”

“No.”

“Paying close attention.”

“Yes.” She laughed, and he pulled her back, and the laughter became warmth, and the warmth became his mouth and his hands and his warm weight and the ocean through the west window. He paid attention the way he did everything, fully, missing nothing, as if he had no other agenda, and she had forgotten what that felt like. Mirelle told him so. Not in words; she’d run out of those somewhere around the second time, when he waited her out and she stopped fighting the pace. She told him with her hands and the sounds she made when he found the right angle, and he answered in kindness.

The fire crackled. The ocean ran outside. The room smelled like cedar, salt, warmth, and this. Her brain, with its committee and commentary and whole noisy operation, went silent. Full stop. Present, here, him. When the urgency passed, and she lay against his shoulder, his wolf-heat radiating into her side, the creatures went still. Not gone. Still. The Lantern, the Margot cohort, Gerald, every creature she had been carrying for weeks, sat down and rested. The quiet reached her, distantly.

Then nothing reached her for a while except him.

The fire had gone low.

She studied the ceiling, cedar planks she would see differently from now on, a problem in its own category. Tor was warm beside her, his wolf-heat wrapped around her in a way she had not anticipated and would need to process later. Much later. “So.”

“So.”

“Emotional healing, it turns out, includes really good sex.” She turned her head to face him. “Interesting development.”

“Is that what this is?”

“What would you call it?”

“Progress.”

Her eyes drifted back to the ceiling. “Progress. That is — yes, okay, that is accurate. You are relentlessly consistent.”

“It’s a feature.”

“That’s what someone relentlessly consistent would say.” The Margot cohort was still. Gerald slept somewhere near the door. The Lantern glowed warmly at the edge of her awareness, calm and content, doing nothing but existing in the right place.

His wolf regarded her. She had learned to read it: its settled patience, arrived after a long wait and not going anywhere. It gave anything it considered important the same steady attention.

She was going to need a lot of wine when she talked to Fiora.

“The ships.” Mirelle changed the subject.

“What about them?” Tor didn’t seem to mind much.

“I want to see how you do it. The actual process. I’ve been thinking about it since you explained it, and I still can’t figure out the mechanics.”

“Want me to show you?”

“Right now?”

“Tomorrow. If you’re —” he chose the word carefully “— still here.” Her eyes found him. He met them. “The hull goes in sideways. Collapsed flat. You thread the rigging through the neck of the bottle first.” Mirelle kept staring, not expecting her gaze to be caught in return.

“You remembered.”

“I told you. I’ve been thinking about it.” No hesitation in it at all. “Yes. I’ll be here tomorrow.” His face opened — barely, but enough.

There it is.