Aldrien woke to find Hazel curled closer to him than either of them had likely intended, her back pressed against his side, nothing about it deliberate, just the natural drift of two bodies sharing too small a bed through the night.
He lay still for a moment, unsure whether to move or let her wake first, listening to the quiet rhythm of her breathing and wondering, not for the first time, how strange it was to recognize himself so completely in someone else’s stillness.
She stirred a second later and went rigid the instant she realized how close they were, shifting away so fast the whole bed creaked in protest.
He pretended not to notice, and she pretended he hadn’t.
Garrick walked in not long after, entirely unaware of the tension hanging in the room, and remarked cheerfully that they must have slept well, given how peaceful the cabin had been through the night.
Neither of them managed a proper answer, and Garrick moved on without waiting for one, clearly used to newlyweds being awkward before breakfast, humming something to himself as he set a pot over the fire.
He laid out the hunters’ trail for them once they’d eaten, tracing the path with a finger against a rough sketch of his own making.
The main road curved wide around the Wildwood, adding days to the journey, but this trail cut straight toward Moonfall Valley if they were willing to risk it.
It wasn’t maintained, he warned.
Rogues occasionally used it, and parts of it crossed territory that belonged to smaller wolf clans who didn’t take kindly to strangers wandering through unannounced.
“Stay together,” he said, more than once, like he didn’t quite trust either of them to manage that on their own.
The trail proved difficult almost immediately, overgrown in places, steep enough in others that Hazel kept misjudging exactly how much power Aldrien’s body actually carried.
She stepped over a fallen log and overcorrected, launching herself forward with more force than she meant to use, and Aldrien caught her before she could stumble face-first into the underbrush.
“You keep forgetting you’re stronger than you think,” he said.
“You keep forgetting you’re shorter than you think,” she shot back, steadying herself against his arm.
“You two argue like you’ve been married for years.”
Neither of them had a response to that.
It landed strangely close to the truth, given how much of each other they’d learned over the past several days, intimacies no ordinary newlywed couple would have stumbled into this quickly, let alone within a single week of standing at an altar together.
They came across a small cluster of wolves from one of the Wildwood clans a while later, and Garrick spoke with them briefly, exchanging names and territory markers in the easy shorthand of people who’d crossed paths before.
The clan recognized the Black and Pinecrest names immediately, and one of the elders studied Hazel and Aldrien with open curiosity.
“Traveling together,” the elder said, like the idea itself was noteworthy.
“The old feud runs deep. Word of it reaches even this far into the trees.”
Someone else asked, more directly, whether the marriage actually meant peace between the two packs, and Hazel and Aldrien found themselves standing shoulder to shoulder, answering together in a way that felt less like performance than it had at the wedding.
“Yes,” Hazel said.
“Yes,” Aldrien echoed, and something about saying it out loud, here, away from either pack’s watchful eyes, felt more real than it had standing at the altar surrounded by hundreds of people who only cared about the alliance it represented.
The threat came without much warning, a rogue slipping out from the trees just as the group started moving again, circling wide before committing to an attack.
This time Hazel didn’t freeze.
She stepped in front of Aldrien before he could react, planting herself between him and the animal without a second of hesitation.
“Hazel,” he said, startled.
“Don’t,” she said, not looking away from the rogue.
They fought together after that, using instincts that belonged to bodies neither of them fully owned, their wolves lending speed and reflex where their unfamiliar limbs fell short.
It wasn’t clean, but it worked, each of them covering the other’s weaknesses until the rogue finally retreated back into the trees rather than press the fight further.
Garrick watched the whole thing with an expression Aldrien hadn’t seen from him before, something that looked almost like reconsideration.
He’d looked at Hazel with open scorn back at the campsite, certain he was watching a man hide behind his wife’s strength.
Now, watching her stand her ground without flinching, he seemed to be recalculating everything he’d assumed about the pair of them.
He didn’t make a production out of it.
“Maybe I judged you too quickly,” he said simply.
Hazel accepted it with a small nod, and Aldrien noticed the way something in her posture eased slightly at the acknowledgment, like it mattered more than she wanted to admit out loud.
They reached a ridge by late afternoon, and Garrick stopped at the top of it, gesturing down toward the valley spread out below them.
Moonfall Valley opened up in the fading light, ancient ruins scattered among the trees, stone structures half swallowed by moss and centuries of neglect, silent in a way that felt heavier than ordinary quiet.
“That’s where your road continues,” Garrick said, pointing toward a break in the tree line that marked the old path.
Then his expression sobered slightly.
“Just remember. People don’t go looking for the old shrines unless they want to find something.”
Hazel glanced at Aldrien, and neither of them said anything to that, though the weight of it settled between them regardless.
Whatever they’d told themselves about this journey being a simple pilgrimage, standing here looking down at ruins nobody had bothered visiting in decades, it felt like something far larger than either of them had prepared for.