He lifted Sophie onto the bed and removed the red shoes. One lace had been tied perfectly. The other was a knot.

"She did that herself," Evelyn said.

"I know."

Silas returned to the floor.

"There is a chair."

"The floor is closer to the door."

"And farther from me."

He looked up.

Evelyn's fingers touched the wedding ring.

"I put it back on because I thought the store might ask for identification," she said. "Then I forgot it was there."

"You don't need to explain."

"You say that whenever you desperately want an explanation."

"I'm improving."

"At lying?"

"At silence."

She turned the ring slowly. "Grant made me wear it after every fight. If I took it off, he said I was advertising myself."

Silas's claws pressed beneath his fingertips.

"He used to check for the mark when he came home."

"The mark?"

"The pale band. Proof I hadn't removed it."

Silas stared at the white line around her finger.

His wolf wanted to replace it with another mark—one made by teeth and bond, permanent enough that no human husband could challenge it.

The instinct disgusted him.

Different symbol. Same claim.

He remembered the first morning after his own father died, when the pack elders had pushed the Alpha ring onto his hand and called duty a privilege. He had been twenty-one, furious, and too proud to say the metal felt like a shackle. For fourteen years, every person who wanted something had spoken to the title before they spoke to the man.

Then Evelyn had looked at him over burned toast and laughed.

She had no idea how dangerous that small sound had been. It had made him want a kitchen instead of a clubhouse, mornings instead of victories, and a place at a table that no one had assigned him by rank.

His wolf did not merely want her body. It wanted the life surrounding it.

That was why he had to be more careful, not less.

He stood.

"I should go."

Evelyn reached for him.

Her fingers closed around his wrist.

Every thought stopped.

"Why?"

He could have lied. Said patrol. Said Sophie needed rest.

"Because part of me saw that ring and wanted to put my mark over his."

Evelyn did not release him.

"Would you?"

"Not without your consent."

"That's not what I asked."

Silas's wolf rose behind his eyes.

"Yes," he said. "I want my scent on you. My arms around you. I want every person who calls you his wife to know your fear ends with me. I want things I have no right to ask for while you're still married and healing from him."

Her pulse beat beneath his thumb.

"Thank you for telling me."

"That should frighten you."

"It does."

She held his gaze.

"But you frighten yourself more than you frighten me."

"I know what wanting can turn into when a man decides it makes him entitled."

"You're not Grant."

"No." Silas looked at the ring. "But being better than him is a low standard."

Her mouth trembled—not quite a smile, not quite grief.

"What standard do you want?"

"One where you never have to become smaller so I can feel large."

The truth landed hard.

Evelyn removed the ring.

It resisted at the knuckle. She twisted until the skin reddened, then placed the ring on the bedside table.

Not in Silas's hand.

Not thrown away.

Her decision, unfinished.

"Sit in the chair," she said. "Not the floor."

Silas obeyed.

"Closer."

He moved the chair beside the bed.

Evelyn lay down with Sophie between them. After several minutes, her hand crossed the edge of the mattress.

"If I fall asleep, don't read anything into it," she whispered.

"I won't."

"And don't sit there admiring how brave you are for not climbing into bed."

"I was planning to admire my chair posture."

Her quiet laugh moved through the darkness.

Silas turned his palm upward.

She placed her fingers in it.

His wolf quieted.

The ring remained on the table all night.

Near dawn, Silas woke to Evelyn's hand still inside his and Sophie's red shoes positioned neatly beside his boots.

For three hours, no one in the room had run.