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It had come through me because I had been bleeding on the sand and needed it. Then, when he had hummed me back to myself, it had disappeared just as completely as it had arrived.

I stood there for another moment, trying to decide what that meant.

Then the other memory returned, the one that had been circling my thoughts all evening.

A warm, amused voice from the rail above the Pit.

Your wolf. In her. Explain.

I hadn't told anyone that I had heard it.

I hadn't told Silas, because he would have gone straight to that box and put his hands on Aldric Vance, and men on probation did not get many chances to survive mistakes like that. I hadn't told Tamsin because she would have told half of Saltmere before lunch the next day, entirely out of loyalty.

There was another reason too.

Saying it aloud would have made it harder to pretend I had misunderstood.

Every time I remembered that voice and the cold eyes above it, the hair along the back of my neck rose. Some part of me, older and more instinctive than thought, reacted before I had time to reason with it. It wanted silence and distance. It wanted me to stay still, make myself difficult to notice, and wait until whatever had turned its attention toward me decided to look elsewhere.

I knew that instinct well. I had been obeying it for most of my life.

I had learned to make myself smaller, to say less than I wanted to say, and to give people as little as possible to catch hold of. If there was nothing interesting about me, nothing difficult or strange or inconvenient, then maybe they would lose interest and move on.

Standing barefoot on the cold floor, I realized how tired I was of living that way.

This time, I did not want to disappear.

I climbed back into bed.

Silas found me almost immediately, even though he never woke. His arm settled across my stomach again, heavy and warm, and I lay there listening to his breathing and to the distant sea below the tower.

After a while, I noticed something I had not expected.

The silence inside me was still there, but there was no panic beneath it. There was no pressure gathering under my ribs, no fear waiting for the next thought to set it loose. The quiet was complete.

Earlier, when Silas had knelt in front of me, I had felt the restless force of the bear beneath his skin, that constant pressure held barely in check. Now it was gone. Lying behind me with his body curved around mine, he was quiet all the way through. Somehow, while he slept with me in his arms, whatever lived inside him had gone still too.

I turned my head on the pillow and pressed my mouth to the inside of his wrist where it rested across me. Then I kissed the heel of his hand. I took his large, scarred hand between both of mine, drew it slowly down my stomach, slipped it beneath the hem of my T-shirt, and held his palm flat against my skin.

He woke the way he always did, instantly and completely. Every muscle in his body went still.

"Wren," he said. His voice was thick with sleep, low enough that I felt the vibration of it against my back. "I told you—"

"Feel for him," I whispered. "Go on. Look for him."

He fell silent.

I felt him turn his attention inward, searching for the familiar pressure, already braced for what he expected to find. Then his breathing changed.

His breath left him slowly against the back of my neck.

"He's..." He stopped for a moment. "He's asleep."

"He's asleep," I said.

His hand remained perfectly still against my stomach.

"What if he wakes?"