17. Rising tension

Hannah flinched when the knock came - three sharp raps that felt like a summons rather than a courtesy - and opened the door to find Marcus already there, coat dusted with road grit and eyes rimmed with fatigue that didn't match the steadiness in his voice.

"I have to go," he said without preamble, boots heavy on the threshold. The words landed like a winter gale that had been waiting behind the door. "The elder at Grey Hollow requested a meet. There's been movement along their border. I need to go today."

Her first, honest want rose like a physical heat: keep him. Keep him tonight, keep him until the ledger of absences thins into something manageable. Instead she folded the feeling into a practiced calm. "How long?" she asked, because the shape of absence becomes less sharp when measured.

"Two weeks, maybe more." He rubbed a thumb over the small crescent scar at his palm where her lavender sachet had once worn thin. "It's reconnaissance and negotiation both. I have to be clear with them - reassure them we can hold the lines. I promised I'd speak." He hesitated, then added, "I promised you I'd tell."

"You did tell me." The words sat between them like a pact and a question. She sensed the echo of their last night - the staying at the meeting, the visible shoulder - and wanted that to be more than a patch against a raw world. "Two weeks is different from not-knowing."

Marcus reached for her hand. His fingers were callused, warm, grounding. "I'll check in as often as I can. If I can't, I'll send word by Keir. He knows where you keep your lavender." He smiled, an apology softened into humor. "You’ve got this."

She wanted to laugh at the small talisman of the phrase and the safety it pretended to buy. Instead she pressed her palm to his chest where the bond throbbed like a low drum and let the truth - vulnerability shaped and unvarnished - slip from her. "Come back to me," she said. "Not just in messages. Come back to me."

He closed his eyes for a fraction of a breath, then leaned down to press his forehead to hers. "I will," he promised. "I will come back."

Marcus left with the twilight swallowing his figure, and the longhouse felt too large without the held space of his presence. The hearth's glow seemed to retreat into its corners. Hannah folded herself into a chair by the window, lavender tucked into the pocket of her dress, and tried to stitch together the hours she would be counting. You’ve got this, she told herself aloud, an echo from rooms they’d shared, a small mandate that steadied her pulse.

Cora arrived the next afternoon with the efficiency of someone who timed worry like a service. The healer's hands were busy with a bundle of herbs, the scent of thyme and something sharper trailing her. She sat without invitation, posture prim, her gaze appraising Hannah as if checking for cracks.

"You sent him off like that?" Cora said, and the sentence bore no softness. "The border with Grey Hollow is tense. Marcus is good - " she paused as if to weigh the next phrase, " - but you must understand the cost of his absences."

Hannah felt the old burn of offense and the newer, deeper sting of feeling patronized. "I understand the cost," she answered. "He told me what he had to do."

Cora's lips thinned. "Telling isn't the same as making arrangements. When leaders go, someone has to keep the pack steady. You mustn't expect him to return to you as if nothing else exists." The words were a trap dressed as counsel.

"It’s not that I'm unreasonable," Hannah said, the heat in her voice surprising her. "I know duty. I asked him to stay visible at the meeting. I asked him to choose me sometimes. He did. And now he has to go. That doesn't make me ungrateful or naïve. It makes me human."

Cora tapped her fingers on the bowl of poultices. "Humans are messy. Wolves are useful. You should rest, Hannah. Let Marcus do the soldier's work." Her tone slid from advice into thinly veiled dismissal. "Pack safety comes first."

The barbs kept coming over the next days - a tightened smile here, a comment about Hannah's focus on romance rather than fortitude there. Cora praised Marcus in front of Hannah with the same admiring intensity she'd once reserved for herbs: "He keeps the supply lines steady," she'd say to anyone nearby, then shoot Hannah a glance that meant: be grateful he lands back at your door at all. The healer's praise carried ownership like a scent.

Hannah's primary objective over those first strained days was simple: maintain the bond without letting Cora's possessiveness fracture her. The obstacle was stubborn - Cora's steady insinuations that Hannah's trust in Marcus was naive, that the pairing made Marcus a risk to the pack if it made him blind to duty. Hannah felt the accusation like frost on open skin: that her love forced choices on Marcus that ought to belong to the pack.

She fought back not with grand declarations but with small gestures that mattered to Marcus and to herself. She repaired a frayed strap on his patrol cloak, mended a loose seam where his pack had worn thin, and left a small bundle of chamomile tea by the hearth with a note: For safe returns. Each act was a stitch; each stitch a contract with the quiet promise they'd exchanged. When Keir brought the first letter - his handwriting a cramped reassurance - Hannah read Marcus's words out loud, letting the cadence of his sentences live in the room: I spoke for both our borders. I will come back at the first safe hour. Keep the lavender where I can find it. You’ve got this.

The letter settled in her palm like a stone to carry and like an anchor. It changed the terms slightly: absence was no longer an empty space but a measured distance, a thing with edges and a map. The bond hummed, the line between them taut but intact. She could feel Marcus' presence in the small things - how the cupboard was slightly askew where he had left a jar of salt, how the smell of smoke clung to the scarf he'd tossed on a chair. These were tiny proofs that he had not detached himself from the life they were building.

A week in, Cora's tone sharpened again when Hannah refused to let the healer rearrange the herb stores without consulting her. "You should leave those decisions to me," Cora said. "You aren't hardened for such things."

Hannah's response surprised even her - soft but firm. "I am part of this pack," she said. "I know the stores because Marcus showed me. I will not be sidelined while you decide what I may or may not manage." The sound of her voice was steadier than the tremor in her fingers.

Cora's face flickered, annoyance and something like grudging respect mixing across her features. "Watch yourself," she warned, and left with the rustle of her skirts sounding almost like a dismissal.

That night, Hannah sat alone by the hearth and allowed the vulnerable truth to bloom without shame: she needed Marcus to anchor her fear, not because she lacked strength but because the memory of the attack - silver glinting in torchlight, the sharp stench of wolfsbane - made her trust fragile. Choosing him was how she gave that fear a name and a face and a place to be tended.

When Marcus returned on a dusk two weeks later, dust on his cloak and the faint scent of another pack's fires on his skin, she met him before he reached the door. He looked at her with an exhaustion that had softened into relief. Without speaking, he folded the distance between them and crushed her to him, fingers tangling in the hair at the nape of her neck.

"You kept the home," he murmured, breath warm against her ear. "You held it while I was away."

She laughed, a short, watery sound that carried all the weeks' tension out into the cold air. "I did," she said. "I had to fight Cora a little." Her smile turned rueful. "She thinks I won't know enough to manage the stores."

Marcus growled, low and possessive, not entirely playful. "Cora forgets this: choosing doesn't weaken him. It steadies him." He lifted his head to meet her eyes. "I chose to go because it was needed. I chose to come back because I wanted to."

The barrier - Cora's disdain and the threat of being sidelined - hadn't vanished. But the consequence of enduring it had shifted: Hannah had defended her place and learned she could hold both love and duty without either being erased. Marcus slid an arm around her waist and pulled her close. In the quiet that followed, neither of them promised impossible absence nor perfect constancy. They traded something steadier: the knowledge that they would show up for each other, visibly and fiercely, even when the pack's demands pulled at their edges.

"You’ve got this," he said into the hollow of her neck, and this time the phrase landed not as an instruction but as a shared conviction.

She pressed her forehead to his and let herself believe it was true.