~Alora~

Riven's mate was named Sable, and she made tea the way some people prayed; with her whole attention on it, every movement intentional, the ritual of it doing the work that words couldn't.

I had come to her on the eighth day after the battle, and again on the fourteenth, and again today, which was the twenty-second. I had not announced the visits or asked Cade to schedule them. I had simply gone, because Sable had two pups and a grief that sat in her shoulders like stone and the kind ...