I swirled the mead in my goblet, following her thread. "So what you're saying is... you have feelings for your pack-brother?"
Her face flushed crimson, her scent flooding with embarrassment and something deeper. She dropped her gaze, her voice shrinking to barely a whisper. "I don't know. It's just... I've always depended on him. Ever since we were pups."
A dreamy, nostalgic quality crept into her words.
"When I had a fever as a young pup, Fenris would stay up all night by my sleeping furs, keeping watch. When young wolves in the training grounds bullied me, he went straight to their dens and made them submit. Even when I experienced my first heat—" She let out a small, embarrassed laugh. "—Fenris was the one who ran to the healers' lodge to fetch me suppressants and cooling herbs."
I listened to all of it.
And felt nothing.
It was only in that moment that I truly understood.
I'd grown up alongside Fenris too. Childhood companions, people might have called us. Our packs had been allied since before we could walk.
But I could never compete with that—with a bond forged from sharing the same den, the same meals, the same everything. The scent of home woven into every memory.