Night in Ashridge felt different after Thornfell’s scent had been in her nose.
Lira lay on her cot, eyes open, listening to the breaths of the sleeping wolves around her. Tansy’s soft wheeze. An older warrior’s rumbling snore. Idris’s occasional mumble—something about mislabeled jars even in his dreams.
The infirmary smelled thick now—layers of wolves and herbs and smoke and something else.
Her.
She wondered what they thought, catching her scent under theirs. Thornfell and Ashridge tangled. Surge and emptiness.
Her fingers worried the edge of her collar.
Cael’s words replayed. *The choice is yours.*
Had it ever been?
Once, under the blood moon, she’d felt very much like a leaf in a flood. No choice. No direction. Just survival.
Now…
Direction yawned before her like that ravine.
Ashridge. Thornfell. The web.
“Thinking again,” Bram’s voice came from the darkness, low and near.
She jolted, heart jumping. “How long have you been… lurking?” she hissed.
“Lurking,” he repeated, sounding amused. “Fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty. Hard to tell. Time blurs when you’re watching someone frown at the ceiling.”
She pushed herself up on one elbow. He sat on the floor at the foot of her cot, back against the wall, long legs stretched out. The dim light from the banked fire carved shadows along his face, catching in the line of his scar.
“You should be sleeping,” she said.
“So should you,” he retorted.
“Touché,” she muttered.
He tilted his head. “You all right?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “But I will be.”
He huffed. “At this point I think you just say that to annoy me.”
“It’s honest,” she said.
“What are you… turning over in that head of yours?” he asked. “Cael? The ravine? Mara’s threat to bite him?”
“All of it,” she admitted. “And… you.”
Silence.
He shifted, his shoulders thumping softly against the wall. “Me,” he repeated carefully.
“You,” she said. “This… thing. Between us.”
He swallowed. “You… want to talk about that… *now?*”
“You wanted me to stop… making choices alone,” she said. “Feels like… talking is… part of that.”
He exhaled, long and slow. “All right,” he said. “Talk.”
Heat climbed her neck. “Very… helpful,” she muttered.
He waited.
She picked at a loose thread on the blanket. “I’ve never… had this before,” she said finally. “Whatever this is.”
“Neither have I,” he said. “Whatever this is.”
Her chest tightened. “You’ve… never been… pulled?” she asked carefully. “To someone.”
“Not like this,” he said. “I’ve… wanted. I’m not dead. But it was always… surface. Scent. Heat. This is…” He made a vague, frustrated gesture with one hand. “Deeper. Messier. Less… controllable.”
“Anaemic,” she said. “Not quite the… moon-struck mate-bond from the old stories. But more than… ordinary want.”
“Yeah,” he said slowly. “That.”
Her lips twitched. “You read old stories too?”
“I listen when the elders ramble drunk,” he said. “Same difference.”
She drew her knees up, wrapping her arms around them. “I thought I’d… never feel anything like this,” she admitted. “No wolf. No… pull. Just… empty. I didn’t… expect to… want. Like this.”
“Like this how?” he asked softly.
She swallowed. “Like… feeling your wolf press against mine—what’s left of mine—and not… wanting to flinch. Or run. Or cut it off. Like… liking… your scent on me. Even when it… confuses everyone else. Like…” Her voice dropped. “Looking at you and… forgetting, for a heartbeat, that I’m… wrong.”
He was very still.
“Lira,” he said, sounding like the name hurt.
Her fingers dug into the blanket. “I know it’s… dangerous,” she said in a rush. “For you. For me. For… the work. I know this… thing… between us is tied up in the surge. In emptiness. In shared trauma.” She laughed, brittle. “We’re textbook codependency material.”
He snorted, startled. “You and your healer jargon.”
“I read things,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “You hoard letters like Idris hoards questionable poultices.”
“I heard that,” Idris mumbled from across the room.
“Sleep,” Mara’s voice grunted from somewhere near the hearth.
They both froze.
Silence again.
Bram shifted closer. He sat now with his shoulder touching the side of her cot, his head tilted back so he could meet her eyes.
“I know it’s dangerous,” he said quietly. “I know we’re… both… not… whole. I know the magic is using us as… threads.” His throat worked. “I also know that when your hand leaves mine, it feels… wrong. Like… the hum cuts off.”
Tears pricked.
“I don’t… want you to go back to Thornfell and pretend this didn’t… happen,” he said. “I don’t want you to… stay… here because you think we need your magic. I want you to… choose. Ashridge. Thornfell. Me. Not me. Whatever. I just… want it to be yours.”
Her chest hurt. “You say that like my choices don’t… break things,” she whispered.
“They do,” he said. “So do mine. So does Corin’s. So did Cael’s when he sent you. The world’s already broken, Lira. Us choosing each other—or not—isn’t what cracked it.”
She let that sit.
“Do you… want this?” she asked, voice thin. “Really. Me. Empty and… sharp and… magic-burned.”
He laughed, soft and disbelieving. “Gods, yes,” he said. “In a way that terrifies me.”
Her breath left her.
“In what way?” she dared.
“In the way that made me want to throw you over my shoulder and run when Cael said you could come home,” he said bluntly. “In the way that has my wolf pacing every time you step into a room and leave it. In the way that when you stand at the edge of that ravine, all I can think is *not her. Take me, not her.*”
Her eyes stung. “That’s… not… wise,” she whispered.
“I didn’t say it was wise,” he said. “I said it was real.”
She reached for him before she could talk herself out of it.
Her hand slid down, finding his where it braced on the edge of her cot. Their fingers tangled. No surge. No magic flare. Just heat. Skin.
His wolf pressed.
Her emptiness hummed.
She took a breath. “I want it too,” she said, so quiet she wasn’t sure he’d hear.
He did. His grip tightened. “Say it again,” he whispered.
“I want this,” she said, louder. “You. In my… life. My… work. My… bed—” She choked the last word off, horrified at herself.
His eyes went very dark.
“Careful,” he rasped. “I’m only half-restrained on a good day.”
She flushed to her scalp. “I meant—”
“I know what you meant,” he said, voice rough. “And I’m not… saying no. I’m just saying… slow.” His thumb stroked her knuckles. “I want… everything. All of it. You under me. Over me. Beside me. But I don’t want to… take… when you’re still deciding who you are without a wolf.”
Her lungs forgot their job for a moment.
“That’s… very… noble,” she managed.
“It’s very strategic,” he corrected, a faint grin curving his mouth. “If I rush you, you’ll bolt. If I let you set the pace, you’ll… eventually… catch up to how fast I’ve already fallen.”
She stared.
He shrugged, looking suddenly self-conscious. “Subtlety’s not my strength,” he muttered.
“No,” she said faintly. “It’s not.”
“Do you… want me to… back off?” he asked. “Give you space. Be… just your stupid beta patient with bad jokes and worse scars?”
“No,” she said immediately.
He blinked. “No?”
“No,” she repeated. “I don’t… want you to… pretend this isn’t… happening. I just…” She searched for the words. “I want… a little time where we… hold hands… and… talk… and don’t… die. Or bleed. Or… drain anything.” Her laugh came out shaky. “I want to know what your… laugh sounds like when it’s not wrapped around pain. I want to hear… your wolf… howl on a night that isn’t… drowning in trauma.”
His eyes burned. “You want… normal,” he said. Awe colored his tone.
“As normal as we get,” she said. “Which is… not very. But still.”
He exhaled. “I can… try,” he said. “Corin’s probably going to keep throwing us at ravines. But I can… carve out… moments. For us.”
“Us,” she repeated.
It felt… good. Scary. Good.
He smiled. Small. Genuine. Like a sunrise over scarred land.
“Us,” he said.
A loud, exaggerated snore from Mara’s corner made them both jump.
“Idiots,” she muttered. “You think I don’t hear you making moon-eyes in my infirmary?”
Lira clapped a hand over her mouth. Bram choked back a laugh.
“Sleep,” Mara grumbled. “You’ll need the energy. Corin’s going to have you tying runes to rocks at dawn.”
“Romantic,” Bram whispered.
“Shut up,” Lira whispered back.
He squeezed her hand one last time, then reluctantly let go.
“Sleep,” he said.
She lay back.
For once, sleep came without blood or stone.
She dreamed of a wolf with a jagged scar and a healer with no wolf sitting under an ordinary, soft silver moon, shoulders touching, saying nothing, needing nothing but that.
It was… enough.
For a night.
---