The first gift arrived in a velvet box.

Cassian placed it on the breakfast table without announcing himself. He had been awake since dawn, arguing with a jeweler over the clasp. Now he stood beside Eli's chair, looking as though he expected a medal.

Eli glanced at the box, then at Cassian.

“You don't have to open it,” Cassian said quickly. “I just thought you might like it.”

Inside lay a small silver pendant shaped like a crescent moon. On its back, almost invisible, was a carved pine tree. The forest beyond the manor had become Eli's favorite place.

Eli touched the pendant with one finger.

Cassian brightened. “The chain is adjustable. No fastening around your neck unless you choose. It could go on a bag instead.”

Eli lifted the chain and went still. For an instant, the delicate links became the heavy metal of the laboratory collar.

Cassian saw his face change. He closed the box at once.

“Bad idea. I'm sorry.”

Eli caught his sleeve before he could leave. He shook his head, opened the box again, and pointed to the pine tree. Then he pointed toward the windows.

“You like the tree?”

A nod.

“Then it's yours. You decide what to do with it.”

Ronan arrived carrying a wooden wolf, its ears crooked and its tail too large. He stopped when he saw Cassian's box.

“Oh,” he said. “We're doing presents.”

Cassian folded his arms. “Apparently.”

Ronan put the wolf beside Eli's plate. “Made it myself.”

“That's obvious,” Cassian murmured.

“The legs are supposed to look like that.”

“Of course they are.”

Eli picked up the wolf. Its rough edges had been sanded smooth. One ear leaned toward the other as though listening. Eli smiled, then placed the moon beside it.

Ronan's shoulders relaxed. Cassian tried not to look pleased.

Across the room, Lucien raised an eyebrow at Adrian.

“This is going to become unbearable,” he whispered.

“It already has.”

By afternoon, the competition had spread. Ronan offered to take Eli riding. Cassian suggested a visit to the greenhouse. Silas quietly put a basket of library books near the garden door. Adrian asked whether Eli wanted to accompany him to the observatory.

Four invitations. Four men watching his hands.

Eli froze.

Lucien noticed first. He stepped between the chairs and set a blank card on the table. On one side he wrote YES. On the other, NOT TODAY.

“An invitation isn't an order,” he told them. “And he doesn't owe anyone an explanation.”

The silence that followed was considerably less comfortable than their earlier teasing.

The following afternoon Cassian asked Eli to accompany him to the village market. Eli agreed only after learning that they could leave whenever he wanted. At the first stall, a merchant recognized Cassian and began praising the Frost family. Eli stiffened at the name.

Cassian quietly corrected the man: “We're here for vegetables, not family history.” Eli selected three pears and paid with his own money. The merchant handed the change directly to him, not to Cassian. Outside, Eli stopped to count the coins.

Cassian waited beside the carriage, realizing that an ordinary purchase could mean more than a silver pendant. On the way home Eli offered him one of the pears. Cassian accepted it with both hands. Later he told Ronan about the market without turning it into a contest.

Ronan listened and admitted that his own attempts to win Eli's attention had sometimes made the house feel crowded. They agreed to ask what Eli wanted before arranging another surprise.

Eli studied the card. He turned it to NOT TODAY and pushed it toward the center of the table.

Ronan rubbed his neck. “Right. Fair enough.”

Cassian looked stricken. “We crowded you.”

Eli nodded once.

“Thank you for telling us,” Adrian said.

That evening Eli took the wooden wolf into the greenhouse alone. The room smelled of wet earth and rosemary. He had learned to enjoy places where nobody expected conversation.

Cassian found him by the lemon trees but stayed at the doorway.

“May I come in?”

Eli considered, then nodded.

“I used to think giving someone a beautiful thing meant they should be grateful,” Cassian said. “My family raised me that way. We bought apologies. We bought loyalty. Sometimes we bought silence.”

Eli lowered his eyes to the wooden wolf.

“I don't want to buy any of those from you.”

Cassian sat on the bench, leaving space between them. He took a folded piece of paper from his pocket. It was a drawing of the pendant, with a second design beside it: a small silver pine tree on a leather cord, meant to hang from a window latch.

“I can have it changed. Or melted down. Or left exactly as it is.”

Eli touched the drawing, then the little tree.

“You prefer the tree?”

Eli nodded.

The next day Eli made a list of things he liked that nobody had given him. Rain on greenhouse glass. The smell of bread. Silas's quiet footsteps. The way Lucien waited for answers. Ronan's terrible jokes. Cassian's willingness to admit mistakes.

Adrian's habit of leaving a light on in the hall. He studied the list and realized that affection did not need to be a competition with a winner. That evening he asked Mara whether people could care about several others differently.

Mara told him that relationships were shaped by honesty and agreement, not by prizes. Eli drew another circle around his tree and wrote a word beneath it: CHOICE.

“Then a tree it is.”

Later, Ronan discovered Eli had left the carved wolf on the kitchen windowsill. He looked disappointed until Eli came back with a scrap of blue fabric. With careful fingers, Eli tied it around the wolf's neck like a scarf.

Ronan grinned. “He looks distinguished.”

Eli shook with silent laughter.

“Better than Cassian's jewelry?” Ronan asked.

Eli's smile vanished.

Ronan immediately regretted it. “No. Sorry. That was unfair. You can like both.”

Eli stared at him, searching for the hidden cost of this permission.

“You can like neither,” Ronan added. “You can tell me my wolf looks like a potato.”

Eli studied the crooked carving. Then he drew a potato on a scrap of paper and placed it beside the wolf.

Ronan laughed so hard that Adrian came to investigate.

The next morning Cassian brought the altered silver tree. Eli hung it by the greenhouse window, where it chimed softly against the frame. The wooden wolf stayed in the kitchen. Neither object had been placed where its giver wanted. Both men discovered they were happy anyway.

Silas found Eli later beside the pond. He sat on the grass without offering a gift.

For a while they watched dragonflies skim the water.

Eli wrote in his small notebook: THEY WANT ME TO PICK?

Silas read it carefully. “They want to feel special to you. That's different from having a right to your choice.”

Eli considered the distinction. Then he wrote: CAN I PICK EVERYONE FOR DIFFERENT THINGS?

“You can pick whatever feels right. And you can change your mind.”

Eli turned to a new page. He drew five rough circles around a sixth. Each circle held a tiny symbol: a star, a flame, a leaf, a shadow, and a crown. In the middle he drew a small tree.

Silas didn't ask what it meant. Eli tore out the page and handed it to him.

At dinner, Silas placed the drawing on the mantel with Eli's permission. The five generals stared at it in astonished silence.

Then Eli pointed to the empty chair beside him.

No name. No demand. Just an invitation.

For once, all five men remained where they were and let him decide who would sit down.