The first week after the claim should have been a settling.
It was not.
The marks on our throats healed into clean, permanent lines that the pack could no longer pretend not to see. The bond between Tristan and me deepened into something constant and vivid—less the raw live wire of the first days and more a steady, open channel that carried mood, proximity, and the quieter undercurrents of thought. I woke knowing whether he had slept. He knew, without asking, when a formal conversation had left me scraped thin. Privacy had not disappeared; it had simply changed shape. There were fewer places left to hide from each other, and neither of us was particularly interested in finding them.
The territory adjusted in uneven layers. Formal acknowledgments arrived. Ranking families recalculated. T
