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I stood and walked over to her, bending to one knee beside her chair, and took her hand in mine.

Her breath caught. She set her mug down carefully, her hands trembling slightly.

“Wolves don’t typically marry,” I said. “We have the bond. The mark. That means everything to us.” I ran my thumb over her knuckles. “But you’re not a wolf, Ruby. You’re a woman who’s had every choice in her life made for her. The mark was your choice, and I’ll never stop being grateful for it. But I want you to have this too. If…” Now it was my voice that trembled. “If you want it.”

I reached into my pocket and drew out the ring. A gold band that I’d discussed with Imogene’s brother, and he’d worked it at his forge.

“Not silver,” she said, her voice low.

“That could be a problem.” I flashed her a lopsided grin.

She laughed. “It would make it hard for you to take my hand.” Her eyes softened. “And I love it when you do.”

I took a deep inhale and worked up the courage as I stared into her eyes. “Ruby, I love you with all my being as both shifter and wolf. Will you marry me?”

She looked at the ring for a long moment. Then at me, kneeling on the floor of our house, with my heart in her hand and my wolf perfectly still inside me, waiting.

Her eyes filled with tears. “Yes.” Her voice trembled.

I slipped the ring onto her finger. It fit. She stared at it, turning her hand in sunlight. Then she slid out of the chair and down onto the boards with me. I cupped her face in my hands and kissed her. She wrapped her arms around my neck, and we kissed and held each other.

My wolf let out a soft sound. Peaceful. Content.

We married at midsummer beneath a quince tree in our garden that Ruby tended. The pack crowded around us, spilling down toward the river. Imogene stood beside Ruby. Gage stood at the back and didn’t leave early. Ruby wore a white dress and carried white flowers. No sign of red anywhere.

Two years later, Gage’s girl was born in the spring.

He carried her up the lane at ten days old, wrapped in a shawl. He walked past our garden and the quince tree Ruby loved, just coming into flower, and knocked on our door.

Ruby opened it. The two of them acknowledged each other with a nod, the way they had a hundred times in the time since the battle with the Crimson Order. Then she stepped back and welcomed them in.

Gage stood in the middle of our front room with his daughter in his arms. She was impossibly small, red-faced and furious at the world, one tiny fist working free of the shawl.

“We named her Sara,” he said, and held her a little higher.

Ruby went still for a heartbeat. Only someone who knew her as well as I did would have seen it.

“That’s a good name,” she said softly.

Silence drew out between them. Seven long seconds. I counted them. I bet Ruby counted them too.

“Do you want to hold her?” he asked.

“I’d love to,” she said, keeping her voice steady. Some things from her training had never left her, like the way she could keep her voice even no matter what was happening underneath.

Gage handed his daughter to the woman who’d killed his mother.

He walked over to me as if nothing remarkable had happened at all. “How’s the chimney holding up?”

I grunted. That chimney was a running joke in the pack. I’d rebuilt it three times now, and it still smoked every time the wind came down from the north. Half the pack had offered me advice. The other half had offered to do it for me. I’d refused them all. Imogene had muttered, Typical alpha.

“It’s holding,” I said while watching Ruby.

She stood by the window in the spring light with little Sara Corrin cradled in her arms, rocking her gently, gazing down into that tiny, crumpled face. She murmured gentle sounds and the baby stopped fussing. She closed a small fist around Ruby’s finger and held on, just above the gold band.

Something tugged hard beneath my ribs.

We’d talked about children. More than once. On winter nights by the fire, in the bed at the back of the house, walking home along the river in the dark. She’d told me she wasn’t ready. That she needed time to adjust to her new life, one outside the Order and part of a wolf pack. One as a shifter’s mate and wife. That she was still learning who she was and what she wanted.