Winter came early that year, slipping down from the trees like a held breath finally released. The frost clung to the hut before dawn, silvering the low roof, stiffening the earth until even the birds kept quiet. Oliver woke before the light, as he always did. Army habit. Body remembering cold mornings that had meant death if you lingered.

You were already awake.

He knew it without looking. He could hear it in the way the kettle was set down too carefully, in the small restless scrape of your chair against the floor, in the faint, maddening rhythm of your legs moving beneath the table. You were burning yourself out again. He could smell it—pineapple and coconut warming against damp wool, gingerbread faint as a promise that hadn’t quite kept.

She’ll work herself hollow if I let her, he thought, not unkindly. Like a terrier worrying a bone, long after there’s nothing left to take.

You had your sleeves rolled, hands red and raw from the cold water, hair pinned back with no care for beauty. Not that it mattered. He felt the familiar pull in his chest anyway—the ache of it, steady and low, like a banked fire. You were thin as a winter reed, narrow-shouldered, legs too short for the way you paced the room, biting your nails as you stared at the small cupboard as if you could bargain more food out of it by force of will.

Money was thin. He knew it. He counted every coin the way he once counted bullets. But watching you ration yourself—skipping bites, stretching broth thin as rainwater—set something old and dangerous stirring in him.

I did not crawl out of that war to watch my wife starve in silence, he thought. Not you. Never you.

He crossed the hut quietly, boots soundless on the packed earth floor. When he reached you, he didn’t speak at first. Just rested a hand at your waist—firm, possessive, grounding. His palm fit there as if it had been shaped for it, broad and warm against your cold through the thin fabric.

You stilled immediately.

That, more than anything, told him what he needed to know.

Obliging, he thought, with a flicker of something like guilt. Always so bloody obliging. Even when you’re running yourself ragged.

He leaned down, breath brushing the side of your head, beard rough against your temple. You smelled like comfort and effort and the small stubborn hope you carried into everything. It undid him in ways no shellfire ever had.

“Enough,” he said at last, voice low, Scottish burr softened by restraint. Not a command barked. A decision made.

You didn’t answer. You never did. But your shoulders drew in, instinctive, and he felt the tension there—your habit of yielding even when you shouldn’t. That was when his hand tightened, not to hurt, but to remind.

She needs boundaries like earth needs frost, he thought. Else she spreads herself too thin and vanishes.

He turned you gently but decisively, guiding you to the chair by the hearth. Pressed you down with a hand at your shoulder. Solid. Certain. The way he had once positioned men under fire—only now there was no urgency, no violence. Just care disguised as authority.

“You’ll sit,” he said quietly. “And you’ll warm yourself.”

Your eyes lifted to him then—those pale, piercing blue eyes that saw straight through his silences. You didn’t smile. You didn’t argue. Your legs kept moving, restless even as you obeyed.

She’s the only thing I came back for, he thought. Didn’t know it till I had her. Didn’t know I was empty till she filled the space.

He crouched in front of you, large frame folding down, hands surprisingly gentle as he wrapped your weak fingers around the warm mug he’d poured. His thumb brushed your knuckles, rough skin against softness.

“I’ve got this,” he murmured, more to himself than you. “You keep the fire. That’s your work.”