14. Hollow Evenings

Hannah stood at the longhouse doorway with the lavender sachet cold against her palm, listening to the pack breathe around her like a living thing. Night had settled into a hard, patient dark; lanterns winked in windows, laughter leaked from the alehouse, and somewhere a pup yelped in a dream. All she wanted was one unarguable claim: a piece of Marcus that arrived because he chose her, not because the clock or duty handed it over. You’ve got this, she told herself, but the words felt thin as breath.

She smelled him before she saw him - smoke and thyme and the residue of Cora’s poultices - the scent a map to where he’d been. Marcus crossed the yard with the gait of a man who had learned to keep his face even in public. He paused only long enough to press a hand to the railing, to steady himself, and when he turned his head their eyes met with that old private recognition. For a heartbeat she was the girl from the mating ball again, the one who’d felt the world rearrange; then obligation slid between them like winter wind.

“I stayed late,” he said, as if the sentence could do the work of all the missing time. His voice carried the same tired apology he’d offered before, shaped now by months of rationed evenings.

“You always stay late,” Hannah answered, not harsh but exhausted. “You come when you can. Sometimes that isn’t after midnight - it’s after dawn.” The confession tasted like iron. Six months of “when I can” had calcified into a ledger she checked in the small hours.

Marcus stepped closer, fingers skimming the lavender-lined crescent she kept worn raw with worry. “I know I’ve been absent more,” he admitted. “The patrols, the liaison meetings - Blue Moon Rising needs me to mend bridges. I can’t - ” He broke off, searching for words that didn’t sound like excuses. “I can’t split myself, Han. But I’m not choosing obligation over you.”

“How do I trust that?” she asked, and the question pulled the night taut. “You said you’d come before midnight. We made rules so we wouldn’t keep breaking each other. Now I mark the hours and find there’s nothing for me at the ones I circled.”

He reached for her, vulnerability threading through the roughness in his hand. “Tell me what keeps you from unraveling, so I can stitch you back,” Marcus said, and there it was: the same plea he’d made at the river, worn softer but no less urgent. “If I’m late, I’ll call. If I can’t be here, I’ll say why. If I fail, make me earn it.”

Hannah looked at him - the scar along his ribs, the tired set of his jaw, the lavender thumbprint he’d always notice - and felt both the ache of what she’d lost and the memory of what they’d fought for. “I don’t want promises I have to pry out of you,” she said. “I want you to choose me first sometimes, Marcus. Even when being first is costly.”

He closed his eyes, the bond between them humming like an old instrument being tuned. “You’ve got this,” he said, softer than any vow, and the phrase landed like an old talisman. “I will choose you. Not always perfectly, but I’ll choose you.”

She let out a breath that felt like an agreement and a dare. “Then start small,” she said. “Tomorrow morning - tea. Sit with me for one boiling pot before the world demands anything.” She smiled, gentle and testing. “You’ve got this.”

He smiled back, and it was the lopsided, exhausted thing she loved. “We’ve got this,” he answered, and for once the words were heavy with intent, not just comfort. Marcus drew her into a hug that smelled of smoke and lavender and the faint medicinal tang that always clung to him. It was enough to steady the fray for the moment - an earned tenderness that promised work, not miracle.

They walked inside together, shoulders touching, and Hannah felt that old, complicated hope: steady as a stitch, fragile if ignored, but real.