Asra couldn’t keep her eyes off Ciaran for the rest of the afternoon, and she couldn’t figure out why.

Her eyes lingered on him now as he worked. She’d set Ciaran on fleshing the boar pelt, an early part of the leather tanning process that separated the fat and soft tissue from the skin with a blade. She’d thrown the skin over a large stone, fur side down, and shown him how to carefully scrape the skin with her fleshing knife, a long blade with wooden handles on either end. The afternoon sun poured down through the dense canopy of deciduous trees.

The wolf had been correct: the boar’s tusks housed a considerable amount of magic and were undoubtedly anchors. Since it would take several hours for the jaw bones to boil long enough to remove the tusks, anyway, they’d decided to carve and skin the rest of the animal as well. The meat would feed them for several weeks, and the skin could be sold for the things they couldn’t make themselves.

Perhaps Asra’s odd fixation with Ciaran that afternoon was because she’d underestimated the usefulness of his physique. When she’d first met him, she’d written off his muscles as pure vanity: good for peacocking to his simpering nobles and nothing else. But vanity muscles alone couldn’t have provided the strength he needed to lodge that spear in the boar’s chest.

Ciaran’s muscles and tendons flexed as he methodically worked his way up and down the flesh, and Asra realized she’d never seen him working before.

“What’s wrong?”

She startled at the sound of his voice, and immediately hated herself for it. She shook her head and waved him off as she returned to her own task of preparing a spot to tan the hide.

Maybe that was why she kept staring at him—she hadn’t thought the man was capable of doing any kind of meaningful work. She had an image in her head of the prince as a pampered socialite, leeching off the wealth of his people and contributing nothing useful to society. He couldn’t go more than two weeks without landing in the newspapers with some frivolous scandal.

And while that was still mostly true, he had proven he had practical skills of some kind. Bane was clearly a wonderful hunting dog, and Ciaran a practiced hunter himself. He had hunted for them when Asra was delirious from her infection, and he’d been eager to help her with tanning the boar hide, even after she’d given him the nastiest, most tedious part to work on. Perhaps he had the potential to—

“What? Am I doing something wrong?”

Ciaran’s voice snapped Asra back to reality once more. She tried to play it off as best she could—at least he’d given her a good excuse this time.

“Yeah,” she said as she stood and approached him. “Your strokes are too short and choppy. You’ll gouge the skin that way.”

She held her hand out for the knife and ignored the way his fingers brushed her palm as he gave it to her. She shooed him out of the way and demonstrated the correct motion with the blade.

“See? Long, smooth strokes. And go in rows, left to right. Like this. When you reach the end of a row, move the skin up and start another row. Do you get it?”

“Yes, I think so. Thank you.”

He gave her an open, genuine smile that made her chest light. It wasn’t that Asra had never noticed that the prince was attractive—anyone with eyesight could see that. He had a strong jaw, a straight nose, and eyes that were slightly downturned, giving him a gentle, boyish charm. She’d simply never cared that he was attractive.

She certainly wasn’t going to start caring now.

“Could I have the blade back, please?”

Ciaran’s hand was extended to her, palm up, and a bemused smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. Asra slapped one of the handles of the blade into his hand and shuffled out of the way. As Ciaran went back to work, Asra leaned over his shoulder to check his technique.

She took a deep, steadying breath, quiet enough so that Ciaran wouldn’t hear. It was probably just the adrenals that had her like this. She and Ciaran just went through a very high-stress, physically intensive ordeal. It made sense that she might be a bit … easily excited. Ciaran’s own excitement was just as potent in the sweat that glistened on his shoulders in the setting sunlight. The scent was not unwelcome.

“Asra, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were watching me more than you’re watching what I’m doing.”

Asra affixed a scowl on her face before she spoke. “Good thing you know better, then.”

As Asra stalked away, Ciaran chuckled to himself behind her. She took another deep breath to clear her head as she spread out the oilskin tarpaulin they used to keep rain off the tent, then busied herself finding several heavy stones to place around the edges to keep it in place.

Just as she dropped the last stone in place, Ciaran called, “I think I’m finished.”

Asra walked back over to him to examine his handiwork. There were a few chunks of fat and muscle still clinging to the skin here and there, but for the most part it was clean.

“So? How’d I do?” He put his fists on his hips and beamed at Asra expectantly.

“Not too bad, for a first try,” she said with a shrug. She’d intended it to be a bit backhanded, but his smile only grew brighter.

“That’s high praise coming from you,” he said.

Asra grunted and said to Ciaran, “Help me get this thing over to the tarp.”

They carefully rolled the skin up—in this stage the hide was very fragile and prone to tearing—and carried it over to the tarpaulin on the ground, then spread it back out again. Asra was so distracted by Ciaran as he worked that she nearly crushed her own fingers beneath one of the stones as she adjusted its position.

Perhaps Asra was just a bit too much of her father’s daughter. It was an accusation she’d heard many times before, though for different reasons.

She could still hear the hushed bickering of her parents late at night, the allegations her mother hurled at her father that he only took so many humanitarian trips to the Windemere City so that he could gallivant around with easily-seduced humans. Looking back on it, Sylvia had probably viewed that as the ultimate insult: to be partnered with one of the strongest hounds in the town only to be passed over for mundane humans.

Now that Asra had spent ample time around humans, she didn’t understand her father’s fascination with them. She hated every moment she had to spend in their towns and cities. They were selfish and destructive, far too willing to step on each other to get ahead of everyone else.

She hadn’t found sex with them to be much different than with other shapechangers, either, other than the fact that she had to be far more careful not to accidentally hurt humans. They were so fragile and slow to heal.

Was that the appeal? Was her father drawn to a protector role? Was it some kind of ancient, doggy need to be near humans and protect them from danger? What if it was genetic, like the canine shapes they took? What if—

“I could put my shirt back on if it would make you more comfortable.”

Asra blinked. Ciaran smirked back at her.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her ears grew hot. She stood and stomped off to grab her tanning solution out of her bag.

“Yes you do.” She could hear the wide smile in his voice from behind her. “You’ve been ogling me all afternoon.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” Her bag rested on a waist-high boulder with a flattened top, alongside their water bottles. She took a deep drink from her bottle, hoping it would help cool her sizzling skin, then rummaged in her bag for the tanning solution.

“I don’t need to,” Ciaran said, and Asra felt his approaching footsteps in her bones. “You’ve flattered me plenty enough already.”

“You’re out of your fucking mind. I’m not one of your sniveling courtiers. I’ve got no reason to flatter you.”

Ciaran stood behind her now, and she swore the tension between them became tangible, as if she could reach behind her and grab the friction that crackled between them. She was grateful he was human so that he couldn’t hear the pulse pounding in her throat, smell the adrenals in the sweat on her neck.

She turned to face him just as she would face any other threat, but was caught off guard by the gentleness in his brown eyes. She remembered those eyes lit up with excitement when they were children in the palace, as he bombarded her with questions about her life—innocent questions of a young boy enamored by the first shapechanger he’d ever met, not the underhanded reconnaissance Nolan had extracted from her.

She remembered the indignation that took over Ciaran’s expression when she’d referred to his dogs as servants. “They’re not my servants! They’re my friends!”

When had that silly boy grown into a man?

Ciaran leaned forward, and Asra’s breath hitched, her heart battering against her rib cage. Ciaran’s lips parted, and Asra knew if he kissed her, she wouldn’t be able to stop him. Not because she was physically incapable—they both knew damn well Ciaran was no match for her strength—but because she wouldn’t want to stop him. What the hell was wrong with her?

When Ciaran spoke, his whisper was warm on her lips.

“Could you step aside, please? I’d like my drink.”

Asra scoffed, pushing him aside as she stepped away from the stone behind her. She ran a hand through her hair and took a deep breath, then turned to confront him.

But he’d already snatched his canteen up and was walking away from her, chugging at the vessel. Even when drinking he looked smug. Confident. He knew exactly what he was doing. He’d played her like a damn fiddle.

Asra growled as she snatched the bottle of tannins from her bag and returned to the tarpaulin to pour it over the hide. She worked the liquid into the skin in silence, fuming over how easily he’d read her. She was behaving like a libidinous adolescent, and she needed to get control over herself.

It didn’t help that she was exhausted. She still hadn’t fully recovered from her illness, and fighting the boar had taken a lot out of her, not to mention the effort she’d put into the skinning and meat carving process. Sbe took a deep breath, gathering herself before she worked more tanning solution into the hide.

“Asra.”

Ciaran’s voice was so neutral that it caught Asra off guard. She glanced up at him. He sat on a rock, elbows resting on his knees, hands clasped as if he were about to make a business proposal. Asra’s eyes narrowed.

“I was just thinking, we’re both adults … ”

Asra’s pulse quickened.

“We’ve been on the road for quite a while now,” Ciaran mused. “We’ve had a lot of near-death encounters, and I’m sure we’ll have several more.” The thought seemed to harrow him for a moment, then he continued, “It’s not healthy for either of us to be under so much constant stress for so long, and I think it would be beneficial for both of us to let off a little steam, if you understand my—”

“Absolutely not.”

Asra said it more to herself than to Ciaran. Her base instincts were winning out over her reason, and she had to put a stop to it. She wouldn’t allow herself any distractions from her goal.

Ciaran put his hands up and smiled with the grace of a man who had spent a lifetime training to handle delicate social interactions. “It was only a suggestion. I thought we could both use a release. It’s been a while for me. Considering your opinion of humans, I’m assuming it’s been even longer for you.”

“You think I’ve never been intimate with humans before? Again, just because I’m not drooling over you doesn’t mean—”

“Asra, you’re drooling more than Bane right now.”

Ciaran flicked his head over to the ridgeback, who happily gnawed at a piece of boar rib Asra had broken off for him, his slobber dripping down the bone and pooling at the ground. Asra huffed and returned to rubbing the tanning solution into the hide.

“You’ve truly lain with humans before?” Ciaran said. “I didn’t expect that.”

“Were you hoping to be the first?” She raised an eyebrow at him. “You’d be sorely disappointed.”

“I would never be disappointed to … ” He cleared his throat. “I just assumed that you wouldn’t want to be intimate with humans. Have you never … ?” He pursed his lips, apparently searching for the right words. “Have you only lain with humans?”

“No. There was one shapechanger.” Asra stood and wiped her hands off on a towel. “We grew up together. After the attack … the other kids didn’t really have any interest in being around me. And Jasper has always been an asshole. No one really liked him, either. So we sort of … gravitated to each other.”

Ciaran regarded her with worried brows. She turned away from him. She didn’t need his pity.

“Anyway,” Asra continued, “I sometimes make things for the rest of the commune. Leather and smoked meats and such. He comes out to the cabin to take it back home, and drop off things from home for me. And sometimes we just … get it out of our systems.”

“So you were never in love with him?”

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Asra scoffed. “No. We never even really liked each other.”

“That doesn’t sound particularly healthy.”

“I never said it was.” She ran her hands down the hide, using her healing magic to speed up the tanning process. “At least none of my former lovers have kidnapped and tried to kill us.”

Ciaran laughed, an honest, unfettered sound that made Asra laugh, too. “That’s true. I suppose it’s a good sign you turned me down. I apparently don’t have very good taste in lovers.”

“What’d you do to piss him off so much, anyway?”

Ciaran heaved a sigh, leaning down to scratch dirt off an unremarkable pebble embedded in the ground. After a moment, Asra thought he wouldn’t answer, but his head finally popped back up and he said, “Is there anything else I can help with?”

Asra threw her thumb back towards the pot boiling over the fire. “You can check on the tusks.”

Ciaran busied himself with removing the portions of jaw from the pot with a pair of metal tongs Asra used to harvest cactus pads back home. “What’s so special about these tusks, exactly?”

“They’re anchors. Don’t want that wolf getting her mangy paws on them.”

“And an anchor is … ?”

Asra poured more tanning solution over the pelt as she considered her next words. “Sometimes, very powerful beasts—the ones you would probably refer to as gods—leave behind their magic in, say, a bone, or a claw. We call that an anchor.”

“But your people don't believe in gods?”

Asra snorted. “Absolutely not.”

“Then where do your people think we go when we die?”

“Nowhere, I guess,” Asra said with a shrug. “We’re not really the religious type.”

“That sounds … bleak.”

Asra shrugged again. “I guess if you look at it that way. The thought of living forever sounds exhausting to me.” She wiped sweat off her brow. “Of course, some of us linger on, here, in this world. People with magic powerful enough to leave behind an anchor. It’s incredibly rare, though.”

“Linger on? As in, their bodies? Like the walking dead?” Ciaran’s face was even paler than usual.

“Oh, no,” Asra said quickly. “Just their magic. More like … what are those things you humans put in your scary campfire stories? Ghosts.”

“Do you know anyone who’s done that?” Ciaran said, but Asra could detect the deflection in his eager tone.

Asra raised her brows at him. “Why are you avoiding my question?”

Ciaran smiled and shook his head. “I suppose you would know all about when someone’s avoiding a question, wouldn’t you?” He sighed. “The issues with me and Vincent are a lot of political bullshit. Mostly.”

“Mm.” Asra was uninterested in asking him to elaborate. She didn’t care much for human politics. She didn’t care much for shapechanger politics, either, but at least those made sense to her.

Asra’s disinterest didn’t seem to phase Ciaran, however.

“We’ve been friends since we were boys,” he said. “He’s always been an insufferable prick. Uptight. I don’t think he ever even had a housekeeper, because they could never take care of things the way he wanted them done.”

Ciaran hissed as he tried to grab onto a bone fragment with his fingers. He grabbed the tongs again as he continued, “He was just as irritating when we courted. He wanted a classic, ‘respectable’ royal family. A powerful reputation. Plenty of heirs. Not the dogs, though. He hated my dogs. They were too dirty. Too loud. Too … ” His voice caught as he searched for the right word, and when he was unable to find it, he ended the sentence with an annoyed groan.

“I’ve never wanted any of that,” he continued as he waved a piece of boar jaw in the air with the tongs, trying to cool it faster. “I’ve never wanted to be tied down to one person. I’ve never wanted children. I just want a whole palace full of dogs and for people to not breathe down my neck about being an embarrassment to the family.”

Asra winced at his last words. She knew what it was like to be an embarrassment to the family.

“Why waste your time with him, then?” Asra asked. “There’s plenty of other people interested in you. Aren’t you tied up with that duchess?”

Asra had never seen anyone flush such a deep shade of red so quickly.

“How do you know about Ophelia?” Ciaran said with an awkward laugh.

“It’s not by choice, I assure you,” Asra grumbled. “When you spend as much time as I have stalking a king, you learn a lot about the people surrounding him.”

“Good things, I hope.”

Asra grunted. No sense in hurting his feelings.

Ciaran laughed. “Well, you shouldn’t listen to idle court gossip. Ophelia and I are good friends. Ah, intimate friends, but nothing more.” Ciaran sighed. “At any rate, it doesn’t matter. She’s betrothed to the Duke of Westbrook.”

Asra cocked her head sideways. “So you two were … ” She ran her tongue over her teeth as she searched for the term the humans used. “ … having an affair?”

“No, no,” Ciaran said quickly. “Nothing like that. They’ve been betrothed since they were infants. She’s free to pursue whatever romantic or sexual encounters she desires until they’re married.”

Asra sighed. The human concepts of lineage and inheritance were so bizarre.

Ciaran sighed and dropped the tongs on the ground. “Anyway, this isn't the first time Vincent and I have ended the courtship, but this time he said he was serious. He said he wanted to get all of his things out of my properties.” Ciaran scratched the back of his head. “I didn’t handle it well. I told Nolan to ship him off to New Port. I’m surprised Nolan actually did it, with how much Vincent has been kissing his arse lately.”

Asra’s mind drifted back to her encounter with Vincent in Ciaran’s apartment. “I thought you said your brother doesn’t like Vincent?”

Ciaran laughed. “Oh, he doesn’t. He’s always hated him. Vincent is common-born, you see. Nolan wanted me to marry a noble from one of the bigger territories, to help strengthen our reign there. And believed Vincent was the one influencing me to be a problem child. Always blamed him when I got into trouble.

“But Vincent is ... special,” Ciaran continued. “He can’t wield magic the same way you shapechangers can, but I swear he’ll find a way someday. He’s brilliant with magic. Nolan wants to keep him close. Vincent knows this and probably wants to use it to his advantage. The only reason he got sent off to New Port is because I asked for him to, and I’m sure Vincent knows that. It was an insult towards him. I intended it to be.” He frowned.

“So you decided it was a good idea to piss off one of the most powerful people in the kingdom?” Asra asked.

Ciaran shrugged. “Well Nolan pissed you off, didn’t he? I suppose it runs in the family.”

Asra wondered what else ran in the family. Ciaran’s father had launched the campaign to conquer the independent states, and Nolan had taken it up with no hesitation when he died. Would Ciaran do the same after Nolan?

“Sometimes I can’t help but feel like Vincent was just using me to further his own goals,” Ciaran said. “Marrying me would have been as close as he could get to being king.”

“Wouldn’t marrying you make him king? After Nolan died?”

“No, not technically. He would have been king-consort, not a true king.”

Asra shook her head as she worked her way down the hide. “That doesn’t make any damn sense.”

Ciaran folded his arms. “You know, you’ve done a lot of criticizing my government, but you’ve never told me anything about yours. That doesn’t seem fair.”

“I don’t have a government. Not a formal one, anyway.”

Ciaran flashed her a disbelieving smile. “What?”

“We don’t have a government.”

“How do you run everything? How do you control currency?”

Asra shrugged. “We don’t use money.”

“What?” Ciaran said with a laugh. “How do you keep everything from falling into chaos?”

“It’s called working together. And sharing. You humans should try it sometime.”

Ciaran resumed fishing the pieces of jaw from the boiling pot of water. “So … when you were brought into the palace for shoplifting … ”

“I didn’t know I was committing a crime. I didn’t even know what money was.”

“But … didn’t you tell Nolan it was just a misunderstanding?”

Asra’s eyes snapped up to fix Ciaran with a sharp glare. When he turned to look at her, he startled.

“He spent the entire night interrogating me about my people,” Asra said, her voice low. “He knew everything about our culture by the end. He knew I didn’t mean any harm. He was looking for us. Looking for someone gullible enough to give him the information he needed. I begged him to leave my town alone. Begged him to just kill me instead. My best guess? He wanted the lodestones and precious metals from our mines, and he didn’t care how many of us he had to slaughter to get to them.”

Ciaran’s brow furrowed. Their teasing throughout the afternoon seemed to have made both of them forget about the wall between them. Now the reality of their situation stood firm and solid between them once more.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

There was sadness in Ciaran’s face, like this wasn’t the way he wanted their conversation to go. But this was exactly what Asra needed to remind herself of. They could flirt and joke all they wanted, but it wouldn’t change the fact that once arrived at Nolan's fortress, she might have to choose between Ciaran’s life and the safety of her home. She couldn’t let herself forget which came first.

Asra nodded and said, “Let me show you how to get the tusks out of the jawbone.”

----------------------------------------

They broke camp a couple hours later. The tanned hide was rolled into a bundle on the horse’s back, the cured meat packed away as neatly as they could manage.

Ciaran glanced at the skinned and hacked-up boar carcass and said, “It’s a shame so much of it is going to go to waste.”

“It won’t go to waste,” Asra said, pointing upwards. “Look. Wolf birds.”

Ciaran followed the direction of her finger to the treetops above them, where a dozen or so medium-sized birds with long beaks and sleek black feathers waited patiently.

“You mean the ravens?” Ciaran asked.

She shrugged and said, “If that’s what you call them. We call them wolf birds because the wolves—the wolf shapechangers, I mean—keep them as pets. They’re a good luck symbol to them.” She shrugged again. “At least that’s what we were taught in school. I don’t know. I’ve never met anyone with wolf fur before that fleabag today.”

“Ravens and wolves have a sort of symbiotic relationship, so that makes sense,” Ciaran said. “Ravens will lead wolf packs to intact carcasses so the wolves can open them up, then the ravens eat the leftovers. The wolves and the ravens both get food that way.” He smiled up at the birds. “They’re smart as hell, too. I bet they make fun pets.”

Asra’s eyes flicked down to the rapidly setting sun. “We should get moving. We’ve wasted a lot of time today.”

She hoisted her bag over her shoulder and was thrown off by its momentum. She tried to steady herself, but her exhaustion sent her teetering backward into Ciaran’s chest.

“Whoa, hey!” he said as he caught her by the arms.

Asra looked back at him, expecting him to be annoyed, but there was only concern in his eyes.

“Are you all right?” Ciaran asked as he helped steady her. His hands lingered on her arms for a moment, stable and reassuring.

“I’m fine,” Asra said, brushing him off. “We need to get moving.”

“You’ve pushed yourself too hard today.”

“I’m fine. Let’s go.”

She headed toward the next town. It took Ciaran a moment to speak, but when he did, his voice was strong and firm.

“I think you need to stay here. I’ll take the goods into town.”

There was such a finality to his tone that it caught Asra off guard. She wheeled around and snapped, “What?”

“You’re exhausted. You’re no good to either of us if you run yourself into the ground.” His voice softened as he said, “We found that out for ourselves, didn’t we?”

Asra sighed. He was right, damn him. They couldn’t afford for her to be out of commission for weeks again, and she wasn’t reliable when she was tired.

But doubt still nagged at her mind.

“You can’t go into town by yourself,” Asra said. “What if something happens?”

Ciaran smiled and said, “Don’t worry. I’ll have Bane with me.” A dark look flashed across his face and vanished just as quickly. “I know this town well. It’s small and quiet. Bane will let me know if something’s wrong.”

Asra chewed her lip as she debated. Ciaran placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. She looked up and their eyes locked for a moment. His brows were drawn together in worry.

“Why don’t you set up camp while I’m gone?” he said. “We can stay here tonight and leave in the morning. You can get some extra rest without wasting any more time. Plus the horse can move faster without all that extra weight.”

Asra sighed. His plan made the most sense.

“All right.”

Ciaran smiled and patted her shoulder before walking past her to unload the camping equipment from the horse. He then pulled himself into the saddle and waved back at her as he called Bane to follow him.

Asra set up the tent to keep herself from watching them leave. She planted the concealment spell, filtered out some more water from the nearby pond into their drinking pitcher, and settled into her sleeping sack.

After nearly half an hour, she admitted defeat on falling asleep early. She took off her clothes and changed into her fur, then snapped a rib off the boar carcass and carried it back under the concealment charm. As she gnawed at it, she watched the wolf birds descend on the carcass in a swarm of black feathers and raucous croaks. She gnawed at the bone for another half hour, but didn’t feel any more inclined to sleep than she had before.

After the ravens had eaten their fill, they retreated back amongst the tree branches. A disquieting stillness settled in around Asra, despite the pleasant birdsong in the air and the soft rustling of the breeze through the trees and grass. The high-pitched keening of her tinnitus rang in her ears, louder than it had in weeks. What had distracted her from it for so long?

She cast her mind out, searching for an answer, and found the muffled stomping of the horse’s hooves in the dirt, Ciaran’s constant chattering throughout the day, and Bane’s panting and pawsteps as he padded along behind them. Thoughts of Bane led her mind to the jeweled leather collar of Bane’s mother back at Ciaran’s apartment, expertly crafted and lovingly cared for over many years. She then thought of Bane’s naked neck.

Asra needed something to distract herself. She wouldn’t be able to inlay jewels, but she might still be able to craft a collar worthy of Bane.

She changed back into her skin and dressed; it didn’t matter much that she was nude all the way out in these secluded woods, but she’d grown so used to clothing that it felt more comfortable for her now.

Asra retrieved the rabbit skin that Ciaran had trapped the last night they spent with Margot. It was soft and supple, and Asra was grateful she’d decided to tan it. She found a tree that was roughly the width of Bane’s neck and wrapped the skin around it. There should be just enough material to work with.

She grabbed her leather crafting tools from her bag and set up on the flattened stone they’d kept their water bottles on earlier that day. The memory of Ciaran approaching her from behind crept into her mind, sending a wave of heat up her spine. She pushed the thought aside.

Asra cut a long strip out of the leather, then rounded each end and beveled the edges. She punched out the holes from the strap and attached a metal buckle to the other end with rivets.

She pondered what to tool into the leather. His name might be nice. If she had time, she could stain the letters orange, on a smokey blue background. It would look nice against his coat.

The collar was much longer than his short name, however. Perhaps she could tool some kind of picture onto either side to fill the space. She wasn’t much of an artist, but she could manage a silhouette of a wolf bird, encircled by boar tusks, on either side of Bane’s name. It seemed a fitting reminder of their first hunt together.

Their first hunt. As if there might be more. As if they might both survive Nolan’s assassination. As if they may have any sort of future together.

She pushed these thoughts aside, too, and tried to lose herself in her craft. It came easy to her as she chiseled away at the leather.

Asra thought of Sophie and Liam back home helping to reupholster the theater seats with fresh leather from the buffalo migration a few months ago. She hated that she wasn’t there to help them. She hated even more that she’d missed the hunt. Most of all, she hated that she still couldn’t return home.

Asra realized then why she couldn’t keep her eyes off Ciaran all afternoon. Hunting with him had given her the same sense of camaraderie she felt when she was hunting with Sophie and Liam, or when she had gone hunting with her father. He’d teased her the same way Liam would, and advocated for her wellbeing the same way Sophie would.

At the culmination of the hunt that afternoon, for one exhilarating moment, he’d made her feel like she was home.

And when Bane returned later that evening without Ciaran, Asra felt the same panic she’d felt for her home when it burned.