Page 52

CRISS

The council session ran until the light outside Emmett's office turned amber, then orange, then the deep purple of a day that had gone on too long and still wasn't done. Seven recordings played in full. Photographs reviewed. Steph's field documentation spread across the table, her translations of the treaty stone's dual inscriptions laid out in the meticulous, cross-referenced format that made Emmett go quiet for a solid five minutes.

Varric's replacement handled it the way Emmett handled everything: steady, thorough, asking the right questions without rushing to conclusions. He'd send a team to the ridge at first light. The recordings would be formally entered into council record. Rydan's property north of town would be searched. The pride families named in Steph's translations would be contacted, gently, through proper channels.

For now, it was enough.

They walked out of the council building into an evening that smelled like wet earth and honeysuckle, the last heat of the day lifting off the cobblestones in waves. The damaged square had been partially repaired, new stones fitted into the gaps where the ward attack had cracked the old ones, though the fountain was still roped off and leaning slightly to the left.

"Can I walk you back?" Criss asked.

Steph looked at him. She'd been running on adrenaline and purpose all day, her voice sharp in the council meeting, her arguments precise, her evidence irrefutable. But now, in the warm dusk with the work done and the adrenaline fading, something softer showed through.

"I was thinking we could go to yours," she said. "For coffee."

"I have terrible coffee."

"I know. I've had it." She started walking toward the western trail without waiting for him. "Come on, Holt."

They walked through the quiet streets and onto the forest path with the easy rhythm of two people who'd stopped pretending they needed an excuse to be near each other. Their shoulders brushed on the narrow trail. His hand found the small of her back when the path dipped over a root, and she didn't move away from it.

The cabin was dark when they reached it. Kieran's main house glowed warm through the trees, but the guest cabin sat quiet under the pines, exactly as he'd left it that morning when he'd followed Rydan into the woods and the world had changed.

He unlocked the door and she walked in ahead of him, dropping her field pack by the entrance with the thud. He reached for the light and she caught his hand.

"Leave it."

Moonlight came through the cabin's two windows in pale rectangles, enough to see by, enough to catch the outline of her face when she turned to him in the small front room.

She stood in the middle of his cabin in her dusty field clothes with her curls half falling from their pencil twist. "Tell me about the claiming," she said.

He leaned against the doorframe. "It happens during intimacy. A bite, placed here." He touched the curve where her neck met her shoulder, his fingers barely grazing the skin. She didn't pull away, but he saw goosebumps prickle up over her skin. "It carries my essence into your blood. Once it's placed, the bond is permanent. You'd feel what I feel. My presence, my emotional state, a sense of direction when we're apart. It goes both ways. I'd carry you the same way."

"And it can't be undone."

"No."

"And it requires my full, informed consent."

"That's pride law. Not just tradition. Any mark placed without explicit consent is a violation punishable by exile."

"So I have to say yes."

"You have to mean yes."

She studied him in the moonlight. "And what do you want, Criss? Not your tiger. Not the bond. You."

The question deserved the truth, and for once in his life the truth came easier than the deflection. "I want you to choose me knowing exactly what you're getting. A man who's spent twenty-eight years avoiding commitment, who's never had a plan that lasted longer than a season, who found recently that his family's legacy is built on their silence." He held her gaze. "I'm not the safe choice. I'm not the stable choice. But I will never make a decision about your life without your voice in it. That's the only thing I can promise that I know I'll keep."

"That's the only promise I need." She closed the distance between them. "Yes, Criss."

He waited for the doubt to come. The old reflex, the voice that said she'd change her mind, that he wasn't enough, that this was too much, too fast, too real. It didn't come. His tiger was quiet in the way that meant certainty, and finally, Criss's human mind agreed with it completely.

"I want to properly thank you," she said, and the shift in her voice sent heat straight down his spine. Lower, rougher, her fingers already hooking into the waistband of his jeans. "For saving my life. For saving the site. For being patient, which I know was physically painful for you."

"It really was."

"This is also the only time you will ever be thanked for withholding information from me." Her fingers found his belt and worked the buckle open. "So enjoy it."