16. Promises

Hannah opened the door before Marcus could knock. The light from inside threw his shadow long across the yard; he smelled of dust and riverwater and the faint, stubborn tang of poultice that had never quite left his clothes. He set his pack down with a soft thud and didn’t immediately meet her eyes.

“You came back early,” she said, because she needed to hear it out loud. The kitchen behind her hummed with the small chores Cora had left for them: bread cooling, the scent of rosemary sharp in the air.

“I cut the run short,” Marcus said. His voice was flat with tiredness, but there was a deliberate steadiness beneath it. “We found a collapsed barn on the way. Took extra hands to shore it up. I signaled the captain and came when I could.”

“You told me you would,” Hannah replied, stepping aside so he could come in. Her hands refused the habit of smoothing the sleeve of her dress; instead she folded them over the lavender sachet in her pocket. “That matters.”

“It does,” Marcus said. He shrugged off his cloak, and their practiced motions made the kitchen feel like the small, known world they’d been carving out. He caught her gaze then, and something in his face opened - worn, honest. “I meant it. I meant to be here sooner. I’m sorry if I made you worry.”

“You’ve apologized,” she answered, not in accusation but in inventory. “You’ve made plans. You’ve also left in the first light three weeks running. Cora hinted I should be realistic.”

Marcus’s jaw tightened. “Cora worries. She’s keeping tabs in the only way she knows how. That doesn’t mean I agree with her. You know how she gets.”

“I do,” Hannah said. “She’s not the only one who worries. The attack left a trace that doesn’t go away just because we say it won’t.” She lifted her chin. “I don’t want to be the one reminding you of your promises. I want you to remember them before I do.”

“You’ve got this,” Marcus said, and the phrase landed like a promise and a plea bundled together. He stepped closer and lowered his voice. “I’m trying - for both of us. I cut the run because the barn couldn’t stand and the farmers needed hands, but the choice to come back? That’s mine. I chose you.”

Hannah looked at him, searching for something firmer than words. “Then show me.” It wasn’t a demand he hadn’t heard before; it was a sentence that had gained sharper edges from months of waiting.

Marcus rested his palms on the table and leaned in, the heat from his body a quiet counterpoint to the coolness of her tea. “Tell me the next thing that would make you feel chosen,” he said. “Give me something I can do that isn’t just promise-making.”

She named a small thing first because the ledger had taught her to test in increments. “Sit with me through the longhouse meeting tonight. Don’t disappear after the patrol rolls are called. Stay until the last argument dies down.”

Marcus’s face shifted, consideration furrowing his brow. “That’s reasonable,” he said. Then, after a beat: “It might be messy. There’ll be politics - supply disputes, who takes the next supply route. But I can stay. I can sit in the room and be visible. You want visible.”

“I do.” Her voice had the quiet authority of someone asking for what she needed and refusing to apologize for it. “You’ve got this.”

He smiled then, a small, tired thing that made the scar at his jaw soften. “Alright. I’ll be there.”

They moved through the evening like two people finally agreeing on the map for a walk. Marcus checked the feed ledger and marked a note with his charcoal stick. Hannah measured flour for the bread, hands steady enough to let the conversation be practical rather than theatrical. The longhouse meeting called them both out later, and Marcus stayed to the last bell of argument. He didn’t always win the points he wanted; he didn’t always take Hannah’s side before the room, but he was there, shoulder visible when questions aimed toward her, a quiet presence that kept the pack’s currents from swinging too sharp.

After the meeting, they stepped outside where the air had lost the day’s heat. A knot of tension loosened between them and didn’t fully untangle; it settled into something more workable.

“You were good in there,” Hannah said, truth plain and bright.

“Because you asked me to be,” Marcus answered, breath fogging in the cold. He looked at her like a question half-formed. “Was that enough?”

“It was a start.” Hannah tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “And thank you for staying. It matters to me when you choose to be seen.”

They walked back toward the hearth in companionable silence, until the sound of footsteps on the stairs announced Cora coming down. The healer’s smile was polite but sharp in that way Hannah had learned to read.

“You two did well,” Cora said, setting a bowl of stew on the table. “Marcus, you listened. Hannah, you were sensible.”

Hannah accepted the compliment and the meal, but she kept her guard up. “We’re trying,” she said. It was easier than the confession she’d rehearsed earlier this week - the one about how the attack made her pair-bond feel like a target. That confession would need a night with no interruptions.

Later, when the longhouse quieted and the night folded in soft, they retreated to the small room that had become theirs by habit. Marcus closed the door and leaned against it before coming to her. “I know Cora worries,” he said, voice low. “But I’ll tell her we have boundaries. I’ll make it clear I go where duty calls, but I come back where my heart is. And I’ll show you that I can do both.”

Hannah let the vulnerability she’d been holding ease out in the shape of a single question. “What if you’re needed somewhere I can’t follow you? What then?”

He considered that, fingers finding hers, warmth steadier than promises. “Then I will write when I can. I will send a scout to tell you if I can’t. I will make the absence an edge we can measure, not a thing that eats us.” He inhaled, neither melodramatic nor dismissive. “I can’t stop the world from asking things of me, Han. But I can make you the thing I return to.”

She let the confession she’d been nursing - fear braided with need - come out, not polished. “Sometimes I want to be the person you fight for first,” she said. “Not because I don’t understand your duties, but because when you choose me, the attack feels less like destiny and more like something we can keep from defining us.”

Marcus closed the final inches between them and kissed her - soft, deliberate, the kind that pressed questions into answers. “You’re the place I choose,” he said against her mouth. “I’ll keep choosing you.”

They undressed slowly, hands careful and worshipful in their familiarity, not in a rush to consummate absence but to make the small ritual of return. Their bodies spoke what words stumbled over: an intimacy that was consent woven into devotion. Afterwards, in the warm hush, Hannah felt the danger of silver and wolfsbane like a distant clink in the dark - still there, still real - but altered by being named and shared.

She curled into his side and whispered, “You’ve got this.”

“And you,” Marcus answered, thumb smoothing the line of her shoulder. “We’ve got this, together.”

It wasn’t a cure. The ledger of obligations would still need tending. Cora would still watch with hawk eyes. The threat of the silver blade would still hang in their private histories. But tonight the cost felt distributed; the promise had been traded for work, for a plan, for a visibility that could be checked and relied upon.