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“Good.” She nodded.

I stood there, dumbfounded. What did this mean?

Before now, she was an assassin who’d been sent to kill me. She’d read through the files, assessing what was in them. Assessing me.

But she’d made a decision.

Now, she was a woman who’d chosen to stay.

And that changed everything.

I took a long, deep breath before I looked at her. “If you stay, there’s one thing I need you to do for me.” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Only if you are comfortable enough to be in a room with me without it.”

“What is it?” She glanced at me, a question in her eyes.

“Put the silver in the cellar.” I pointed to her basket. “And anything else that you brought to damage a wolf.”

“Oh.” She nodded, understanding revealing itself on her features. “The silver’s sealed.” She blinked twice. “Is it affecting you?”

I rubbed the back of my neck and paced in front of the fire, similar to the way she’d done so when processing that her grandmother had signed a warrant to kill her. “I—I don’t know,” I stammered.

I couldn’t explain this connection to her yet, this overwhelming sensation. She’d heard enough to process for one day.

She studied me for several seconds. “Yes. We can store it down there. That’s fine.”

That meant trust, or at least the beginning of it.

But after we put it down there, my struggle didn’t ease. Not that I truly expected it to. Like she’d said, the silver was contained. The silver could weaken me. But could it scramble my mind enough to mistake her for my mate? That seemed far-fetched.

Told you, my wolf said.

So that meant we were together in my cottage, and I’d be tormented by her nearness, her scent. Knowing what it meant.

But accepting the certainty of it?

Impossible.

We’d both been marked for death by the Order.

Was that our fate?

The silence stretched until I couldn’t stand it any longer.

“I’ll bring back dinner,” I said. “Something other than hare.”

Ruby looked up from the papers. “You’re going hunting? Now?”

“The stew’s gone, and I won’t feed you bread and mint for supper.” I nodded toward the door. “Bar it behind me if you like.”

She didn’t answer. But she didn’t reach for the knife either.

Outside, the cool air greeted me. The light had turned amber over the clearing, and the snow on the far ridge had turned the color of coal. I walked to the edge of the cleared ground, where the bare earth met the first of the bracken.

The shutter creaked on its iron, indicating she was watching me from the window. I felt her attention on my back the way you feel sun through glass.

Let her watch. Let her see what the Order had spent eighteen years teaching her to fear.

The shift took me the way it always did: a pull at the base of my spine, then the world rearranging itself. Bones lengthening, the familiar ache of it, the ground rising to meet four feet instead of two. Colors dulled. Everything else sharpened. The forest opened like a tapestry before me.