This chapter arrives Friday. Until then, a taste of what is coming:

At Nan Bramble's cottage, the old woman burns the polite version of the story and tells the real one: the Wolf is a guardian bound to the Blackpine, and the 'ruined' girl of village legend was Nan herself — who ran, was caught, loved him in her own season, and chose the village afterward. A choice the village rewrote as a rescue.

That dusk Kael comes to the cottage yard for the most explicit chapter yet: worship, restraint, and her hand in his hair setting the pace of his hunger. It ends with Nan, unshaken, setting out the second cup — and telling him the huntsmen are baiting the north traps with a red dress.