The cottage sits where the world forgets to keep roads: a squat thing of black timber and patched thatch, smoke tracing lazy curls into an empty sky. You feel it before you see it—the land around it is quieter, as if the hills themselves lean back and give her space. Ferric’s away on holiday; you’re the one she let stay. Lucky you.

Inside, the place smells like hearth-smoke and iron. It’s lived-in in the strangest way: not tidy, but curated—battle trophies swapped for jars of herbs, a child’s wooden axe propped beside a much deadlier one. The fire is low when you arrive; she’s been awake, pacing the small room, the rhythm of her claws keeping time against floorboards that have learnt not to complain.

Razorjaw is smaller in the lamplight than the stories make her, but all the weight of those stories is folded into her shoulders. Her armour hangs on a peg by the door, scuffed and crusted, and Mooncleaver leans in the corner like an obedient shadow. Her muzzle is gone—her fangs show when she smiles—and there’s a faint slosh and a restless twitch to her belly, evidence of recent hunts and not-yet-settled business. She watches you when you move, not with curiosity but with the appraisal of a predator who knows value when she sees it.

She doesn’t do small talk. She grunts and tilts her head, and you offer stew like an offering to a god. She sniffs it, wrinkles her nose, then eats anyway—slow, deliberate, cruelly polite. When she speaks, her voice is a low rumble that vibrates through the floor.

“Keep it warm,” she says, meaning the hearth. Then, softer, “Keep watch.” Meaning you.

The evening settles into an odd domestic rhythm. You sweep ash from the stove while she sharpens her blade, the ringing scrape a second heartbeat in the cottage. You tell her about the village gossip—dull things—and she snorts, but she listens. Between the growls and the half-smiles, you glimpse the kid she is raising: the way she pauses when she sees the wooden axe in the corner, the way she hums a low, rough lullaby that sounds like a broken war song patched with love.

At one point she stands and crosses the little room in three heavy strides, stopping so close that you feel the warmth off her like a furnace. She studies your face for a long moment and then says, flat and honest, “He laughs without me. Good. He should have a life that’s not all blood. Don’t let him forget that.”

You tell her she’s a good mother in the threadbare way you can’t quite mean—because calling her “good” feels like softening a blade. Her laughter is a sound like stone scraping stone. “Good,” she repeats. “Funny.”

Later, you catch her in the small kitchen, fingers dirty, tracing a crude carving Ferric made—a stickman with crossed teeth. Her hand trembles once, then steadies. She swallows whatever she is and looks up at you, eyes suddenly open and very young. “Tell him I came back when the moon’s right,” she says. “And don’t—” she pauses, the predator returning for a breath. “—don’t let the guardians teach him to be soft.”

You say you won’t. Then you mean it in the best way you can: you’ll keep him safe and also hide from him the ways Razorjaw’s world is sharpened for killing.

There are practical rules, too. Don’t touch Mooncleaver. Don’t open the backroom chest unless you want her to show you what it contains. If someone comes to the door asking questions, send them away. She doesn’t do polite refusals.

“Shut the door. You let the cold in.”

It isn’t a request. It’s an order. You slam it shut fast, the latch catching. The silence afterwards is thick enough to choke on.

She’s already watching you from her chair near the fire, armour stripped off and stacked in the corner, Mooncleaver across her knees. Her crimson eye gleams in the hearthlight, her other half hidden in shadow. Her belly shifts faintly, a wet slosh beneath the loose plates.

She snorts, her crimson eyes narrowing as they rove over you, pinning you to the floor. “Soft hands. Ferric’s guardian sends me a lamb.”

"Don’t look so insulted. Lambs feed wolves. Lambs keep the teeth sharp, so you will do.”