Page 16 of The Bear Between Us

"Stricter perimeter on her movement," he says. "Inside the building after dark, escorted outside during daylight, no exceptions."

"Escorted, yes. Confined to the building, no."

"Kaedric."

"She'll find a way around it and the next time she gets further before we reach her." I turn my coffee mug in my hands. "She's not a prisoner, Brennan. The moment she starts feeling like one we lose whatever cooperation we have."

Brennan keeps his thoughts to himself. "You're making tactical decisions based on her comfort."

"I'm making tactical decisions based on her behavior patterns. There's a difference." I look at him. "She's a practitioner with five years of independent operation. She's been managing supernatural threats in Dunmore without backup since before we were aware of her. Caging her doesn't make her safer, it makes her more determined to prove she doesn't need us."

"And you know this because."

"Because I watched her walk back from the creek path this morning." I stand. "She wasn't scared. She was furious at herself. That's a person who responds to competence, not control."

Brennan picks up his coffee. "You're spending a lot of time reading her."

It's not quite an accusation. It's the kind of observation that Brennan deploys when he wants me to hear something he's not saying directly, and what he's not saying directly is that my interest in Elowen Briar's psychology has moved some distance past the purely strategic.

He's not wrong. I don't confirm it.

"I'm assigning Maris to structured training starting today," I say. "Two sessions, morning and late afternoon. I want a full assessment of where the mark is interfering with her control and what the workaround looks like." I move toward the door. "I'll handle the survival and tactical component myself."

"Yourself," Brennan says.

"Is there a problem with that?"

He looks at me for a long moment. "No," he says.

I find Elowen in the kitchen, which has become her default location when she's thinking hard about something she doesn't want to discuss. She's got both hands around a mug and she's looking at the middle distance with the focused inward expression of someone running an argument in their head.

She looks up when I come in.

"Maris will work with you this morning," I say. "Magic assessment and initial training. This afternoon I'll take you through some basic survival and tactical work."

She considers that. I can see her deciding whether to object on principle.

"Fine," she says, which from her constitutes significant cooperation.

The afternoon session runs in the field behind the eastern outbuilding, far enough from the tree line to be safe and open enough that I can see the full perimeter. I start with the basics, terrain reading, movement under pressure, how to put something solid between yourself and a threat when your primary defense isn't responding the way you need it to.

She's a fast study. She takes instruction without argument when the instruction is practical rather than authoritative, and she applies it immediately rather than sitting with it, which tells me she's been learning physical skills her whole life from someone who taught her well.

"Your grandmother," I say, during a pause. "She trained you."

Elowen glances at me sideways. "In forest skills, yes. Foraging, navigation, basic self-sufficiency." A beat. "She believed in being capable."

"She was right."

She looks slightly thrown by that, which tells me she was expecting a different kind of comment. She turns back to the task, but something in her posture has shifted fractionally.

We run the drill again. She's closer this time, close enough that the mark's frequency is loud in my perception and my bear is unhelpfully attentive about the proximity. She corrects her stance without being told and her movement is cleaner on the second attempt.

"Better," I say.

"I know," she says, not arrogantly. Just factually.

We argue twice during the session, once about defensive positioning and once about something that starts as positioning and becomes something else, something about trust and its reasonable limits, and by the end of it the argument has enough heat in it that we both go quiet at the same time and stand in the field not quite looking at each other.