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They stayed until the barista started running a cloth over the counter, pointedly — the wordless signal that she wouldn’t be heartbroken if the evening wrapped up in the next forty-five minutes. The cheese board was gone. The glasses had been refilled so many times Althea had lost count, grateful, at least, that Fiora’s apartment sat above a pie shop with accessible stairs.

Bexley reopened the notebook near the end and added three lines to the section whose tab color Althea now recognized.

“Don’t.”

“It refers to the schedule for the integration process.”

“I don’t want to hear about my integration timeline.”

“It’s favorable.”

“That isn’t reassuring.”

“It was meant to be.” Bexley looked over the top of the notebook at her. “You said what you needed to say. The magic settled for the first time. The ward lines acknowledged it.” She let that sink in for a moment. “That’s a good sign. That’s the whole entry.”

Althea sat with this.

“Also,” Bexley added, capping her pen, “the green tab has four entries, three of which are about you.”

“What are they?”

“Favorable developments.” She closed the notebook with a satisfied click. Her documentation was going smoothly. “That’s all you need to know.”

Outside, the town square was quiet, tucked in for the night. The replacement lanterns burned at a safe distance. The fountain’s rune-marks had gone dark. The ocean was audible from here, as it always was in Spelltide Cove — low and present, not needing anything from her.

She walked back to Ink and Ember, the cardamom cookies in her hand, the warmth in her palms quieter than it had been in a week. The floorboards in the stairwell creaked at the two spots she knew. The apartment was dark and borrowed-feeling, the way it had been since she arrived.

EIGHT

DRAYCE

He decided to train her on a Wednesday.

He told himself he made it for practical reasons. Three surges. Three ward breaches. A pattern that would only worsen if nobody stepped in. Someone needed to teach her control, and he was the obvious choice.

His wolf had paced all night.

These two things were unrelated.

He was not entertaining questions on the subject.

The training clearing sat in the scrub oak and coastal pine between the residential quarter and the cliffs — far enough from the ward line that disturbances here didn’t show up on the boundary monitors, yet close enough that the ocean was always audible beneath the wind through the trees.

He’d used it for thirty years, and before him the previous alpha, and before that people whose names he knew only from the records. The center had been worn to bare earth by decades of practice. Scorch marks radiated from it at the twelve o’clock position on the surrounding trees. Old claw marks marred the bark up to about eight feet.

The perimeter containment ring was stone, old and weather-worn, with the ward symbols on the inner faces nearly worn away. It kept the magic in. Not the incidents.

He’d always found this distinction appropriate.

She arrived on time, which he noted. She wore boots and a dark pullover, and she looked like she’d committed to doing something difficult and was choosing not to think too hard about it before she got there. He recognized it. He used it himself.

He looked at her. “You look like you’re walking into a performance review.”

She looked at him. “How many performance reviews have you had where the stakes were set to accidentally set the venue on fire?”

“This one.”

“Then we’re even.”