Chapter 4: Dependence

Severin's POV

She held her arms out for a long time.

I stood where I was and watched her — the open palms, the waiting — and did nothing.

I had seen this before. More times than I could count.

They came at me in different ways, but the goal was always one of two things: claim the luna's position, or put a blade somewhere vital.

A thirty-year-old Alpha lord, it seemed, was considered fair game by everyone.

It disgusted me to the bone.

As for physical needs? A contract. Money changed hands. No feelings. No attachments. Either party could walk away whenever they pleased.

That was the only kind of entanglement I ever allowed myself.

So I ran through the possibilities the way I always did, methodically, one by one.

Severe injury with memory loss. An elaborate performance. A pawn deployed by someone with a longer game. A genuine stray.

I had dealt with every variation. Each one had a corresponding response.

I was almost ready to turn and walk out.

She isn't lying.

I know. Shut up.

Her arms had dropped.

I stopped.

She'd held them up long enough that they simply gave out, falling back into her lap without a sound.

But her eyes — those eyes hadn't changed.

Amber-gold, clear as still water, fixed on me with an uncomplicated directness that had no business existing in someone found at the edge of the Wandering Forest.

It was the look of a girl who had grown up deeply loved and deeply safe.

If those eyes were lying, the Moon Goddess herself wouldn't believe it.

I looked at her again.

Her expression grew more and more displeased, her small brows knitting together like a young animal that had been ignored.

"Why aren't you answering me?"

"It's not like I'm forgetting these things on purpose."

"Can't you stop being like this?"

I blinked.

Was she actually getting angry at me?

Who did she think she was, speaking to me like that?

No one talked to me like that. Not in this hall, not in this territory, not in any room I had walked into in the last ten years.

Something moved in my chest. Low and strange, like a hairline fracture opening in frozen ground.

She's so cute.

Get out of my head.

I shut it down. My expression didn't move. I let my gaze drift past her flushed face to the cloak hook above the fireplace, giving myself two seconds to reassemble.

Fine. I would give her the benefit of the doubt. Once.

But extending that courtesy and letting her stay were two entirely different things.

"I wasn't ignoring you," I said. "I was thinking."

She pressed her lips together.

She didn't push. She just watched me with those amber eyes, steady and unblinking.

I needed space to think clearly.

"I want a few minutes of quiet," I said. "If you need anything, come find me."

She nodded, cooperative enough.

I stepped through the side door and out onto the balcony, settling against the stone railing.

I went through the plan, start to finish.

Two days of observation to confirm she could manage basic functions on her own.

Then a quiet escort to the Moonlight Sanctuary in the central territories — a proper sanctuary, staffed with healers who specialized in cases like hers.

I had nearly finished convincing myself.

No.

I ignored it.

Then I heard footsteps behind me. Light ones, slightly uneven.

I turned slowly.

She was standing in the doorway in my late grandmother's old sleep-dress — lake blue, faded at the hem, long enough to pool around her feet entirely.

Her silver hair stirred in the cold air. The top of her head came up to my collarbone.

"Um," she said softly. "What's your name again?"

I stared at her.

I had told her my name. Recently.

Could she actually survive on her own at the Sanctuary?

Could she survive anywhere?

"Little wolf," I said. "My name is Severin. Remember it."

She nodded. The hem of the dress swayed, and her bare feet came into view.

I looked down at them. Then back up.

"Why aren't you wearing shoes? It's cold."

She blinked at me, looking completely innocent.

"Huh? I'm not cold. It's warm. And I don't have any shoes."

I went back inside and pulled a pair of thick wool socks from the chest beneath the bed.

She followed me in, padding quickly across the stone floor, then stopped close and looked up at me.

"I wasn't trying to be difficult earlier. You kept staring at me and not saying anything, and you never smile, so I thought you were angry."

I crouched down and worked the socks onto her feet, one at a time.

"I wasn't angry," I said. "And I wasn't being harsh with you."

She considered this seriously.

Then something in her shoulders released, and she sat back on the edge of the bed with the air of someone who had just resolved a significant concern.

I straightened up and let my gaze move to the stone carving above the fireplace — the old crescent-blade sigil, the mark of this pack.

Too open. Too trusting. She doesn't belong here.

Send her to the Sanctuary. It's the right call.

Then something poked me. Low on my abdomen. Far too low.

My hand closed around her wrist before I'd consciously decided to move.

I looked down at her hand, held in mine. Two seconds of silence passed.

I placed it back on her knee.

"An adult she-wolf," I forced my breathing to steady, "does not touch an unfamiliar male wolf in that area. Particularly not below the waist."

She looked genuinely puzzled. "Why not?"

I decided not to explain it to someone who had no memory of basic social structure.

I stepped half a pace closer. She tilted her head back toward me without seeming to notice she'd done it.

"In two days," I said, keeping the half-step between us exactly where it was.

"Once you're able to take care of yourself, I'll have someone escort you to the Moonlight Sanctuary."

I let a brief pause settle before I finished.

"You can't stay here indefinitely. I can't keep looking after you."

She looked up and asked, with complete seriousness: "Why can't you?"

"Because we don't know each other. We're strangers."

She tilted her head. "Your name is Severin," she said.

"And I'm —" She stopped. Something flickered across her face and went dim.

"I'm — I don't have a name yet. But you're the only person I know. And you're the one who brought me back."

The pressure behind my eyes had started to build.

I was about to rephrase. Find a gentler construction.

Walk her through the difference between being rescued and being taken in permanently, clearly enough that it would actually land —

Her stomach made a sound.

She pressed both hands over her midsection and looked up at me. Her expression was entirely untroubled.

"I'm hungry."

A beat.

"Severin. I want food."

I looked at her.

The sentence I had been assembling dissolved without ceremony.

Trouble, I thought. That was the only accurate word for her. An absolute, uncategorizable nuisance.

Feed her first. Everything else could wait.

The poke to my abdomen had left a faint residual awareness I had no intention of acknowledging.

I kept my expression unhurried, my tone easy.

"All right, hungry little wolf. What do you want to eat tonight?"

Dinner was fixed each day. I wasn't about to change the menu for her.

Once she told me what she wanted, I would refuse.

A petty little revenge.