Tobias
She slept exactly how I needed her to.
Curled on her side. Breathing slow. Too heavy to wake easily. The tea had done its job—again.
I stood in the doorway for a long moment, watching the rise and fall of her chest beneath the blankets. The firelight painted her skin gold, softening the sharp edges she’d grown into over the past year. This version of Nevara—quiet, pliant, unaware—felt like a gift handed directly to me by fate.
Lucky didn’t begin to cover it.
Three days. That’s all it had taken.
Three days of carefully measured wolfsbane, steeped low enough not to kill her, not even enough to raise suspicion—just enough to keep her wolf muted, unreachable. Just enough to slow her healing. Just enough to make her doubt herself.
The head injury had done the rest.
I’d almost lau
