There, silhouetted against the bruised horizon, stood San. Her wolf ears twitched, catching the whisper of his heartbeat from half a league away. Moro, her great white wolf mother, lay beside her, one eye open—a sliver of molten gold.

“A wolf does not care what a badger fashions from stolen metal,” San snarled. But it was a reflex. The venom had no fang behind it.

A lie. They both knew it.

Ashitaka looked at her. Really looked. The human girl raised by wolves. The princess who was no princess. A creature of tooth and claw who had learned to weep when she thought no one was watching.

“Permitted?”