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No clerk suggests review of my teeth.
The bond warms in my chest, deep and steady, while Isolde’s hand finds mine in full view of everyone. I lift our joined hands and kiss her knuckles because I can, because she permits it, because my hunger does not surge in panic or possessive violence when I touch her publicly.
It simply warms.
Strength, not threat.
That is what it feels like now.
Power folded into my bones. Fire under command. Hunger integrated into the same structure that holds love, temper, bad jokes, and the frankly heroic patience required to survive council meetings. I spent so long fearing that every strong feeling would become appetite. Now desire moves through me and finds its place. Anger rises and waits for judgment. Protectiveness sharpens without stealing the wheel.
Isolde looks up at me after the delegates step away to argue with the builders about access roads. “You’re quiet.”
“Enjoy it while it lasts.”
“I never know what to do with the quiet version of you.”
“Admire him?”
“That seems premature.”
“Study him academically?”
“Already doing that.”
“Flirt with him shamelessly?”
Her mouth curves. “Possibly.”
I turn toward her fully and lift my free hand to touch the side of her face. Her skin is warm from the low sun, and a smudge of ink remains near her temple. I brush my thumb beneath it, though the ink does not quite come off.
“I’m never hiding my horns around you again,” I say.
Her expression softens into something that makes the entire clearing feel too small to hold me.
“Good,” she says. “They suit you.”
“That is a dangerous compliment.”
“I am a dangerous woman.”
“I noticed.”
“You survived.”
“Barely.”
She laughs, and I kiss her there beside the unfinished doorway, in front of fresh cedar beams, muddy grass, lingering council representatives, my sister pretending not to watch, Mira absolutely watching, and Rhazek radiating silent judgment near the trees. Isolde’s hand comes to rest against my chest, not to steady a surge, not to restrain a threat, but simply because she wants to touch me.
The sun sinks lower.
The new house glows gold along its beams. Shadows stretch over the neutral ground between districts, softening old borders until they look more like paths than walls. Work crews pack tools. Delegates drift back toward their carriages. Sable and Mira argue about kitchen shelves. Bren tells a carpenter the drainage is wrong. Rhazek remains near the trees, but when I glance at him, he gives the smallest nod.
I put my arm around Isolde’s waist, and she leans into me without checking whether anyone sees.
Peace settles around us slowly, shaped by labor, testimony, scars, and the stubborn refusal to let anyone else define what survived. It feels earned in the same way a healed bone feels earned: stronger at the break, tender in the weather, and part of the body forever.
Isolde rests her head against my shoulder while the last light catches on the curve of my horns.
