Chapter 13
Winter came slowly that year.
The air sharpened. The mornings turned silver. The repaired house held warmth better than the old one ever had, and at night I slept between cool skin and warm fur and thought sometimes, with a private kind of amazement, This is real. This is really my life.
Adrian still cried too easily.
Rowan still used that against him mercilessly.
Neither of them had any intention of changing those habits.
But both of them had changed in the ways that mattered.
Adrian no longer fled at the first vulnerable feeling.
Rowan no longer hid every insecurity behind jokes.
And me?
I had stopped apologizing for wanting to be loved.
That might have been the biggest change of all.
One evening while we sat around the table, Nora knocked and barged in without waiting.
She took one look at us—Rowan making dinner, Adrian cleaning fish with insulted precision, me sorting grain—and grinned.
“The village head wants to know if you’re joining the winter market in town,” she said. “Apparently between one top-tier siren and one top-tier fox, your household is now considered respectable.”
I snorted.
“Tell him he’s late.”
Nora cackled and left.
After she was gone, Rowan slid a bowl in front of me and asked lightly, “Do you regret it?”
I looked up.
“Regret what?”
He rested his chin on my shoulder from behind while Adrian pretended not to listen at all.
“Going to the shore that night.”
For a second, I thought of everything that had happened since.
The hunger.
The loneliness.
The old embarrassment of being passed over.
The tub. The lard. The pearls. The tears.
The black market.
The fox who bought himself.
The siren who came back.
The chaos.
The hurt.
The warmth.
The love.
I smiled.
“No,” I said.
Adrian’s hands paused over the cutting board.
Rowan’s tail brushed my ankle.
And just like that, the answer settled into the room as if it had always belonged there.
Later that night, after Rowan had fallen asleep and Adrian was half-dozing beside me in his tail form, I reached down and lightly touched the edge of his reverse scale.
He stiffened instantly.
“Ellie,” he whispered, scandalized.
I bit back a laugh.
“What? We’re home.”
His face turned red in the dark.
Then, after a long pause, he muttered, “You still have to be gentle.”
I smiled and kissed his temple.
From the other side, Rowan’s sleepy voice drifted through the blankets.
“I hate both of you.”
“You love us,” I murmured.
He made a noncommittal sound and tightened his tail around my leg anyway.
Outside, wind moved softly through the yard.
Inside, the lamp burned low.
And for once, there were no comments in front of my eyes.
No warnings.
No mockery.
No outside voice telling me what story I was supposed to be living.
Only the one I had chosen for myself.