Mira slipped through the wet ferns alone, leaving Kira asleep by their fire. The note had named this place — a lone cabin deep in the Forgotten Peaks, where a waterfall drowned every other sound. She told herself she only needed to hear them out, learn what they wanted, and come back useful. She wanted Kira to trust her with hard things. She would handle this one herself. Three figures waited by the cabin steps. She knew their rings before she knew their faces — small thieves' guild bands, the same trio that had watched the ridge through a spyglass days ago. On a flat stone outside the door sat a small purple crystal, glowing faintly in the mist. Mira's stomach dropped. She knew what memory lived inside it. The tallest one smiled and held out a folded contract sealed in red wax. "He sent us," he said. "Your old keeper wants his property back, or he wants the silver-eyed fox girl traveling with you. Your choice." Mira took the contract. Her fingers shook once, then stopped. She read every line. They had her darkest day written down in ink and blood — proof enough to break her if Kira ever saw it. "Bring us the fox," the tall one said. "Collar her, hand her over, and this disappears. Refuse, and Kira learns who you were before her." The crystal pulsed on the stone like a second heart. Mira felt the old smallness reaching up her spine. She made herself stand taller instead. She folded the contract and tucked it into her coat. "Three days," she said, voice steady. "I need three days." They nodded, satisfied, and let her walk away. She did not look back until the waterfall hid the cabin. Then she pressed a hand against the contract under her shirt and started the long walk back to camp. She would not deliver Kira. But she would not tell her either — not yet. The lie began the moment she stepped into the firelight and said she'd only gone to scout.

Mira slipped back into camp before dawn. The fire had burned down to coals. She knelt by the ring of stones and fed it kindling, hands steady on the outside, shaking somewhere under her ribs. Two cots sat on either side of the flames. Kira's looked untouched, blanket folded back as if she'd just risen. Mira told herself that meant nothing. She built the fire up until it cracked and threw light across the clearing, and she practiced her face in the warmth. Up the slope, behind the frost-laced rail of the old watchtower, Kira lowered a small spyglass. She had seen Mira leave. She had seen her come back. She did not come down right away. She watched the way Mira's shoulders sat — too square, too careful — and she watched the hand that kept drifting to the inside of her coat. Kira's mouth thinned. She tucked the glass away and started down the ladder without sound. Mira heard the boots and turned with a small, ready smile. "Couldn't sleep," she said. "Thought I'd get the fire going." Kira crouched across from her. The flames moved between them. For a long moment she only looked at Mira, plain and quiet, the way a person looks at a lock they've already half opened. Then she said, "You were gone four hours." Not a question. Mira's smile held, but her breath caught once. The lie she had rehearsed sat behind her teeth, useless. Kira reached across and laid a gloved hand on Mira's wrist — gentle, not stopping her, just there. "Whatever it is," she said, "you don't have to carry it clean." She didn't ask for the contract. She didn't ask for the name. She only waited. Mira did not answer. But she did not pull her hand back either, and the silence between them stopped being a wall and became something thinner — a door Kira had already set her palm against. The secret was still hers. It was no longer only hers to decide.

Dawn cracked grey over the third morning. Mira had not slept. She watched Kira lace her boots by the coals and finally spoke the plan out loud — the wolves, the cub, the men who meant to take it. Kira listened without interrupting. When Mira finished, Kira nodded once. "Good. We hunt first." They moved low through the frost. Mira spotted the small white shapes near a hollow — three rabbits with thin ice horns, ears twitching. She put two down clean with her knives. Kira took the third. They knelt together and chopped the meat into rough pink chunks, packing them in cloth that quickly stained. The wolves' den opened wide in the mountainside, jaws of stone above a sand-pale floor. Mira crept close enough to smell musk and old bone. She set the first pile at the lip of the cave. "Small piles," she whispered. "Close enough to follow. Far enough to keep them moving." Kira watched her work and did not correct her once. They laid the trail in a long curve toward the clearing where the cub was caged. Mira placed each handful herself, reading the wind, adjusting for slope. Behind a stand of pines they crouched and waited. Yellow eyes appeared first. Then the bodies — twin-tailed, grey, silent. The wolves found the meat and came on. In the clearing, three men stood around the bound cub, arguing over a collar. They did not hear the pack until the pack was already among them. It was fast and ugly. Mira looked away once, then made herself look back. When it ended, two men were down and one was running. The wolves circled their cub, sniffing, licking, lowering their heads to it. Kira stepped out first, hands open, and the lead wolf met her eyes and did not charge. Mira stood at her shoulder, breathing hard. Kira didn't turn to explain the next move. She just said, "You already know." Mira's chest went tight and warm. Then, from the treeline where the third man had fled, a horn sounded — short, sharp, answered by another further off.