Kira came back at dusk.
She did the quiet check she had been doing since the morning — brief, practical, confirming what she already expected to confirm. Then she sat at the kitchen island while I made tea and Darius sat at the island's other end doing the last of the day's administrative work with the specific focused-but-adjacent quality of a man who has decided to be in the same room as his mate tonight and is arranging the work around that decision.
"The ligament pain will recur," Kira said. "It's not a warning. It's the body doing what it does at this stage."
"I know," I said. "You told me."
"I'm telling you again," she said. "So that when it happens, the knowing is the first thing you reach for." She held my gaze. "Not the fear."
"The fear will still be there," I said.
"Yes," s
