Disclaimer: I love Ryohgo Narita! But i'm not him.

Chane stirred. There was a warm body against her back, and a warm arm over her waist.

Chane's eyes flew open. The room was dim, but not pitch dark, with ambient streetlights coming in through the window and no other source of illumination. Her husband's breath was steady behind her.

She hadn't woken up.

That scared her.

Chane had become used, more or less, to sharing her bed, but she always, always woke up when her husband came home. She was always a light sleeper; she knew anyone could come after her, at any time, and so she'd trained herself to stir at the slightest sound creeping up on her in her sleep. It was a tendency that had resulted in several sleepless nights as winds gusted outside her window.

Her husband often worked at night, and at first she'd always stayed up to watch for his return. He told her she didn't have to, and sometimes he was gone all night long, returning in the morning or afternoon with a smile and a kiss, and eventually she'd started going to bed before him, when he was going to be gone for a long time. She always woke up when he came in. She had no way of knowing, after all, just who it was entering her home in the dark hours of the night.

She hadn't woken up. This could be anyone behind her now.

But she recognized the faint scent of blood that always accompanied him, even after he'd washed, and she knew it was him.

Had she really come to trust this man so much, when she wasn't even sure what his name was? He'd told Chane that she and only she could call him Claire Stanfield, while everyone else had to use the name Felix Walken. Chane didn't understand what the meaning was behind a name only she could use, when she couldn't even speak it out loud. She'd checked with Nice, and it wasn't a normal part of marriage. Like so many other things about the man she'd chosen to marry, it was inscrutable.

Just as inscrutable was the impulse, not to reach for the knife under her pillow and reassure herself that it was still there, but instead to curl in closer to Claire's body.

She resisted the temptation for only a moment, before turning over and pressing her face to his collarbone.

Claire stirred then, his mouth finding her hair, his hand running up her back. "I'm home," he murmured. Chane nodded against his chest. She didn't understand how he always seemed to know exactly what she was thinking – he somehow read it from her eyes – but he couldn't see her eyes now.

Claire shifted, wrapping himself just that little bit more around her. "You trust me more now?" he asked, and even though his voice was drowsy, there was a teasing note to it. "You never used to let me sneak up on you like this. You didn't even go for a knife."

Chane didn't respond that time. She didn't know how she felt about this new development.

He seemed to recognize how she felt anyway, though, and whispered, "That's good," into her hair. "It means you see me as an ally."

An ally. He'd said something like that from the beginning, hadn't he, that he would become her family and help her protect her father. Maybe it was all right. She'd decided to trust him, after all, when she agreed to marry him.

She must have known, somehow, that it was him coming in, even in her sleep. Maybe it was the same way he always knew what she wanted to say to him, even when she didn't herself.

If so, that was all right. She'd made a promise to him, and maybe she believed in him. She could afford to let her guard down just around this one man.

For him, and only him.