He was sitting on his bench, carving. He always was. His workshop smelled like pine shavings and linseed oil, and Lily stopped walking the moment the scent hit her.

She watched him work for a long time. Didn't speak. Just watched his hands move, the curls of wood falling, the shape emerging.

Soren noticed her the way old wolves notice things — without looking up, without changing rhythm. When the shape was done, he held it out.

A wolf. Small enough to fit in a child's palm. Four legs, tail up, head tilted slightly, as if listening for something.

Lily took it. Turned it over. Ran her thumb along the carved fur.

"That's yours," Soren said. His voice was rough gravel. "Every wolf needs a wolf."

She looked at me. I nodded.

She clutched it against her chest with both hands. She didn't let go of it for the rest of the day. Not during lunch. Not during the walk back. Not when she sat on the porch and watched the afternoon clouds stack up like white mountains.

The other wolves noticed her. Of course they did — she looked exactly like me. Same dark hair. Same sharp jaw, miniaturized. Same way of watching people with her head slightly tilted, like the carved wolf Soren had given her.

But it wasn't my face that got them. It was what she was. A child who'd been thrown away by a pack. Declared dead. Hidden in a silver room. Found by accident at a border in the dark.

They looked at her and saw themselves.

Not pity. I would have stopped that. Pity was a luxury my people couldn't afford and wouldn't tolerate. What I saw on their faces was recognition. The quiet nod of one survivor to another. I know. I know what that is. Welcome.

Maren — who'd lost her left arm in a border skirmish and still moved like she hadn't noticed — brought Lily a blanket without being asked. Dax — who still flinched at loud noises from his years in a punishment pit — showed her how to skip rocks at the stream and didn't correct her when she threw them straight down.

These people. My broken, beautiful, thrown-away people. They closed around my daughter like a fist, and I let them, because a fist can also be a hand that holds.

Evening came. The territory quieted. Cook fires went to embers. The perimeter shifted to night watch — tighter, sharper, especially now with the Council's "containment" forces arriving within days.

But that was tomorrow's problem. Tonight was ours.

Lily sat on my lap on the porch. The carved wolf was in her hand. She'd been quiet for a while — not sleeping quiet. Thinking quiet.

"Rhea?"

"Yeah?"

She didn't look at me. She looked at the wooden wolf.

"Did you always want me?"

The question landed like a physical thing. Like a stone dropped into still water from a great height.

I made myself breathe. Made myself answer with the truth, not the safe version of it, not the version that smooths the edges. She'd had enough smooth edges. Smooth edges were what liars used.

"I wanted you from the second I knew you existed. Before I knew if you were a boy or a girl. Before I knew what you'd look like or what your voice would sound like. I felt you move inside me and I knew — that's my person. That's the one I've been waiting for."

She was very still.

"And then they told me you died. They told me you were born dead and they'd already — " My voice cracked. I let it. "They told me you were gone."

"Were you sad?"

The word "sad" was so small for what it had been. Sad was a rainy day. Sad was a lost toy. What I'd felt was an extinction event. The world had ended and I'd had to keep living in it anyway, walking around in the wreckage, pretending to be functional while everything inside me was ash.

"I was destroyed," I said. "I stopped being the person I was before. I became someone else. Someone harder."