"I know."

"So don't make promises you can't keep, Alpha King."

The title was deliberate. A wall. A reminder — to him and to myself — of what he was and what I was and how much distance those things required.

He held my gaze. In the dark, his eyes were nearly black. His wolf was right there, pressed against the surface, and I could feel it the way I could feel the moon — a gravitational pull that had nothing to do with choice. His wolf and mine, both straining toward each other across that last stretch of dark air, both being held back by the humans attached to them.

My hand moved. Half an inch. Toward him.

I stopped it.

He saw. His breath caught — a small sound, barely there, but I heard it the way wolves hear everything. The way I heard Lily's nightmares from across the hall. The way I heard my scouts' heartbeat shifts when something crossed the border. That sound lived at the frequency where my defenses didn't work.

"I should go," he said.

"Yes."

He didn't go. Not immediately. He stood there for three more seconds — I counted, the way I'd counted Lily's breaths in the dark — and in those three seconds, every possible version of this moment existed. The one where I reached for him. The one where he reached for me. The one where we stopped being careful and let the wolves win and dealt with the wreckage in the morning.

Then he turned and walked back into the trees.

I didn't follow him to the border. I walked back to the house. Slowly. Letting the forest close around me, letting the sounds of my territory replace the sound of his voice. An owl. The creek. The distant murmur of the night watch changing position.

I checked Lily. Still asleep. The wooden wolf still facing the door. I brushed a strand of hair from her face and she sighed and turned into the pillow and I stood there, one hand on the doorframe, and made myself breathe.

Then I went to my room. The window faced the forest — his direction. I watched from behind the glass. His shadow moved through the trees, fluid and quiet, barely disturbing the underbrush. Even his exit was careful. Considered. He moved like someone who understood that every trace he left could be used against both of us.

And then he was gone. The forest swallowed him. The moonlight filled the space where he'd been standing and it looked exactly like every other patch of ground, and you'd never know that something had shifted there, something had cracked open between two people who had no business cracking anything.

My wolf made a sound.

Not a growl. Not a warning. Not a war cry.

Something I hadn't let her make in six years. Something soft and aching and terribly, terribly alive. A sound that meant: that one. Him. He's the one.

I closed the window.

Pressed my forehead against the cold glass and breathed until my hands stopped shaking.

Through the wall, I could hear Lily breathing in her sleep. Slow. Steady. Safe.

I had my daughter. I had my territory. I had forty-seven wolves who would follow me into fire. I had a siege coming and a Council that wanted me to break and a winter that would test every supply line I'd built.

I did not need a man who came in the dark and left before dawn. I did not need the weight of his almost-touch, the sound of his voice saying things that could burn us both. I did not need to know what would have happened if I'd closed that half-inch.

I didn't.

I pulled the curtain shut.

But I stood there for a long time before I walked away.