I frown as he pulls away, my fluted ears pinning to the high arch of my neck as I turn my head just enough so I can look at him again. His expression is as hard to read as ever, but there is a guard to it that I do not expect.

I do not pull away.

Change is inevitable, he says, and I frown against his skin. He is being more oblique than usual and so I say nothing in response, letting him dictate where our conversation will meander. Where it goes next, however, is the last thing I expect.

"What?" My voice is sharp, more pointed even than the first moment we'd met on the Ruins. I say what as if I haven't heard him, but the command he'd uttered was burned into my brain. "What?" I say again, this time hissed between clenched teeth.

"What the hell do you mean?" I shift, pulling away from him so that I can face him like a spurned cat. "Are you coming with?" I ask, because that matters more than anything else. I will gladly shed this fetid territory, but only if I am guaranteed Garmr.

I had made my choice. And I was not changing it now.

Surely he didn't intend for me and Nazanin to go out and try to exist anywhere else. Surely he understood that I didn't want that anymore. The thought of playing nice and polite with some other stallion. Of building a home or feigning romantic interest or living in a herd. All of it sounded miserable if I could not have Garmr.