44. Two Weeks of Cedar

Hannah heard the hinges before she saw him - a soft, familiar sound that carried the cedar and smoke Marcus always wore like armor. She’d promised herself two weeks, a fragile bridling of hope and caution, and now he stood in the doorway with his cloak half-buckled and Cora’s handprint faint on his sleeve. The sight should have been enough to steady her. Instead it pushed the ache under her ribs up like tidewater.

“You said two weeks,” she said, the words out before she could soften them. They were small, precise, a measurement she could hold.

Marcus’s mouth tightened. He crossed the room in three long strides and set his palms on the table as if to steady himself. “I meant it,” he said. “I do.” His voice had that rough edge she’d learned to read. “But there’s something you need to know. Cora’s pup - she’s close. Closer than we expected. The midwife wants me nearby. The pack needs me to be present.”

The air between them chilled; not from the weather but from lists and obligations settling into place. Hannah’s fingers found the scar on her wrist and rubbed it absentmindedly. “So you’ll be here for the pack,” she said, not a question. “And for me?”

He looked at her then, properly - through the flash of the ridge, the ashlight promise, the memory of the mating ball that had sealed them. “I will be here,” Marcus said, and the word carried weight. “Cora asked me to stay because she trusts me. But that doesn’t mean I’m not choosing you. Being beside her through the birth is… part of keeping this place whole. I won’t hide behind duty to avoid you.”

There was honesty in that, ragged and real. Hannah wanted to catalog it. She wanted to list every small kindness she needed and then watch him perform them. Instead she let a softer question out, vulnerable enough she could taste it. “How will I know when you choose me? When it’s not gratitude or obligation?”

Marcus stepped forward until the light caught the planes of his face. He reached for her wrist, thumb resting over her scar with the same intention and gentleness that had once calmed her. “You’ll know by the small things,” he said. “I’ll find you between those duties. I’ll bring you tea at dawn when you don’t ask. I’ll listen to the way your voice tightens before you say you’re afraid. I’ll leave the council tent when you need me, even if it risks a reprimand. I’ll choose the bedchamber over the barracks when I can. I’ll show you, Hannah, not just tell you.”

Her breath thinned; his promise was less tidy than the two-week tally she’d made in the dark, but it was offered with hands, not words. “And if the pup comes and it takes all your time?” she asked, the edge in her voice belying a deeper fear of being seconded by life’s emergencies.

“Then I’ll be honest,” he said. “I’ll tell you what I can’t be and what I still will be. If I fail, you will know why, and we’ll decide what that means together. No disappearing into niceties.” He let his forehead rest near hers, the cedar scent warm and intimate. “Two weeks is ours. There will be times when duty tugs hard. But my first act, when it’s quiet, will be to find you.”

Hannah closed her eyes and let the promise settle like embers - not conflagration, not certainty, but possible warmth. She could feel the pack’s demands pressing at their edges, the silver blade’s memory still a threat, the gnaw of expectation. Still, in the hollow of his hand on her wrist, she felt a small, stubborn answer: you’ve got this.

She mouthed, “Show me,” and when he kissed the scar, it was an agreement written on skin.

The kiss after his promise was a slow thing, not the fireworks of their first meeting but a deliberate sealing - a small rebellion against the list of duties that crowded the longhouse. Hannah’s fingers threaded into the rough of his cloak, feeling the coarse weave and the heat that still clung to him from the garden. Marcus smelled of cedar and wet earth and an undercurrent of something fiercer, an animal steadying itself in the dark.

He drew back only enough to look at her, the two of them suspended in the small circle of lamp-light. “I’ll be back before dawn,” he murmured, not bargaining but naming a plan, a hinge. “Unless - ” He swallowed. “Unless something comes up that I cannot refuse. I won’t hide from you.”

She wanted to quote him back the promise he’d given on the ridge, wanted to make him say the two-week vow as if reciting it would iron out the edges. Instead she let herself be led toward the narrow pallet, the longhouse’s wood warm under their feet, the air thick with smoke and the faint, sweet rot of drying herbs. The room held ordinary things - pegs, a cracked basin, a half-made spool of thread - but tonight those edges felt like sanctuary.

Their clothes were moved with the efficient choreography of people who knew the unspoken permission of urgency. Marcus’s hands were both careful and urgent: sliding a strap free, sweeping hair back from Hannah’s neck, tracing the scar on her wrist as if committing it to memory. She answered with tests of her own - an insistence in the tilt of her chin, fingers mapping his jaw, the beat of her pulse under her throat. Each touch asked for proof; each reply granted it.

When they came together it was less an erasure of the week-long ache and more a matching to a rhythm they both needed. Marcus’s breath was low against her collarbone, steadying through raggedness; Hannah listened and let the world narrow to the scrape of their bodies, the whisper of fabric slipping, the small exhale of the longhouse settling as if it too approved. He moved with a reverence that surprised her, as if holding the memory of the mating ball between palms, the weight of their bind honored in every slow, sure motion.

Consent hummed like a second heartbeat - spoken, returned, held. “Are you with me?” Marcus asked at one point, voice thick.

“Yes,” she said, and the single syllable held infinite things: trust, hunger, a readiness that was not naïve but chosen. He answered with a sound that was not quite a laugh and not entirely speech, and then they were simply two wolves learning the language of being chosen.

After, they lay tangled, the cedar scent curling around them like a benediction. Marcus’s forehead rested against her shoulder; she could feel the steady, animal pressure of his chest rising and falling. Outside, the pack breathed on, business and births and watch-calls knitting into the night. Inside, Hannah could trace the soft promise in Marcus’s lingering hand at her waist. It wasn’t the end of doubts - she’d kept them like small, private stones - but it was proof that when given the space, he would choose the small, ordinary acts she’d asked for.

He left before dawn, as he’d said he would - quiet, careful, the cloak folded over one arm. At the door he paused, one hand on the frame, and looked at her with an intensity that made the room shrink. “I’ll find you,” he promised again, softer this time, as if pressing the vow into the wood itself. “Even when the pack tugs.”

Hannah pulled the blanket to her chin and watched him go, feeling the echo of his heat on the pallet and the steady, taut hold of the two-week bargain. The space he left hummed with aftermath - scent, warmth, a new kind of proof. She let herself believe in it, not blindly but like a person learning to walk on ice: deliberate, alert, hopeful. You’ve got this, she thought, and let the thought settle like a steadying hand as sleep finally eased her.