Page 64
Tor stood at the top of the pack line and did a headcount. Everyone present, three injuries, none as severe as anyone was admitting. Maelin claiming his shoulder was fine. Pike calling a cut a graze, which Tor intended to settle before anyone dispersed. Bexley already had the notebook open, pen moving. Garnet worked the group, quietly and economically checking on everyone, as if she’d already decided how each conversation would go. Fiora sat on a piece of driftwood at the waterline, studying her own hands, and Althea came to sit beside her: not a brief touch, but a full sitting-down. The conversation Tor had been avoiding was happening now.
Drayce stood near enough to Althea that they were a unit, as they had been all evening, and Tor noted and approved without comment.
After everyone had retreated from the shoreline, he found Mirelle sitting cross-legged on the gravel, palms flat on the ground, eyes on the water. She raised her head when he sat beside her. “Everyone has gone home. The ward line’s stable.”
“Felt it.”
“The tide pools are settling.”
“The ward system ran clean for the first time all season. The water responds.” He studied the slow gold-white lines moving offshore. “Your magic. The ocean knows.”
Her eyes stayed on the glow for a moment. “I did that.”
“Yes.”
“That’s —” She stopped. “That’s a lot to sit with.”
“You have time.”
“Conveniently.” Her gaze drifted to the tide pools. “Because I’m going to be around for a while.”
“I need to tell you some things.”
“About the bond?”
“About what it does and what it means and what happens if we go forward.”
Mirelle turned to face him fully. “You’ve been sitting on this for two months.”
“I was waiting for the right moment.”
“Tor. We are on a breach shoreline with bioluminescent tide pools.”
“It’s dramatic.”
“It is.” She met his eyes, warm and certain. “Tell me.”
He told her. All of it: the bite, what it changed for good, the bond, the lifespan part, what she’d feel from him and he from her. He didn’t soften any of it, because she was Mirelle and required the accurate version.
She listened with the focused stillness she brought to things that mattered. Then she asked four questions. He answered all four.
She was quiet for a long moment. “You’ve been checking my wards personally. You found lemon in my kitchen I didn’t know I had. You brought me into the tunnel when you could have made me wait outside.”
“Yes.”
“That was all —”
“Yes.”
“You are the most controlled person I have ever met.”
“Yes.”
She turned back to him. “I want this. I’m choosing this. Not because of the bond.” She held his gaze. “Because of the ships in bottles. Because of the way you listen when I say something. The way you hear it and don’t tell me what I meant. Because you have made me feel seen every single day since one morning when my kitchen briefly stopped making sense and you walked in and treated me like a person instead of a problem.” She stopped. Took a breath. “I choose you. The whole difficult, controlled, emotionally-learning-to-exist version of you.” She considered that. “That last part was a compliment.”
His wolf went still. Not the waiting kind. The arrived kind.
Home.
