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“The rigging requires uninterrupted focus.”

“The rigging requires less sleep than you’re getting. We’ll discuss this.”

“We don’t need to discuss it.”

“I’ve added it to the list.”

“What list?”

“The list I’m keeping. For Bexley. Orange category.” His eyes were on her. She sat cross-legged on the floor next to the worktable, close enough to see the build detail, her wine glass within reach. She grew more at home in his space with every week that passed, and he had no name for what that did to him and was not going to find one right now.

“Stay.” She tipped her chin up. “That’s not a question.”

“No.”

A beat of candlelit quiet. The fire. The ocean outside. “I was going to anyway.”

She named it plainly, because that was what she did now.

They were on the rug by the fire, the worn wool rug, the armchairs, the hearth. She set her wine down deliberately, as if she’d thought about what she wanted to say and decided tonight was when she’d say it.

“I’m staying because I want to. Not because of the bond, or the magic, or the tether.” She met his eyes. “Because I want to be here. I know the difference now.”

“I know.”

“I’m saying it out loud.”

“I know that too.”

She held his gaze. “The claiming.” Tor’s wolf went quiet.

Her eyes went to the fire. Then back at him, direct and certain. “I know what I told you in the cabin. I’m not taking it back. I’m ready for more of this. All of this, tonight.” Steady, no wobble in it. “Not the permanent part. Not yet. But I’m choosing everything up to it.” His wolf had already answered before he did.

“Good.”

She reached for him first.

Always her first. As if he had been waiting for it, the warmth in his chest shifted from the managed kind to the real kind as her palm met his cheek. He covered her hand with his and turned his face into it before closing the last of the distance.

He pulled her in.

The first time had been trust arriving after a long approach.

This was something else. Surrender. The managed distance, all those training sessions and check-ins, and the eleven straight minutes Pike had caught him staring, was gone. She’d named what she wanted and reached for him, and that had closed the last of it. He took it slower this time, which he hadn’t thought possible. No urgency. Only certainty.

“The slow thing again.”

“Yes.”

“I’ve decided I’m in favor.”

“Still yes.”

“I’m saying it out loud.”

“That too.” She made a sound that was not a laugh. He answered it. Her hands pulled him closer, and he went, gladly, because he’d wanted to be nowhere else for eight weeks. He knew her: where she’d stopped expecting things, what she hadn’t realized she was missing. He was patient with both, the same steady patience he brought to everything that mattered, until nothing was missing and she was all here, all his.

The fire burned lower. The ocean ran outside. Her hands on him, his on her, the wolf-warmth of him, not managed, not measured, all in. “Tor.”