I prop myself on one elbow and watch him in the thin light from the bedside lamp. The cheap bulb catches the planes of his back, and I study him the way I couldn’t when he was my patient. Not checking for pressure sores or monitoring anything.
Just looking.
He’s lean. Years of burning through everything the body takes in. His shoulders are broader than they look when he’s standing because he carries them hunched forward, braced. Lying down, with the tension gone, the breadth of them is striking.
His skin is pale where the scars aren’t. The chain grooves on his wrists are thick and ropy. The rune marks along his ribs are raised, silvery…wounds held open longer than they needed to be.
I’ve seen his back before. Ravenclaw, when I washed him. The cave, when the firelight moved over his skin. I’ve touched these scars, noted them, but moved past them because there were always more urgent wounds.
I’ve never looked at them like this. In still light. Without urgency.
The marks on his shoulder blades are different from the others.
I lean closer. Thin silver lines curving along the bone in patterns too precise to be random. They follow the shape of the scapula, branching and reconnecting. The kind of work you’d see in fine metalwork or hand-drawn calligraphy. The hand that made these wasn’t hurrying.
My stomach turns. The same way it did when I saw the scar marking his ribcage.
I’ve been looking at these scars for weeks and seeing damage. They’re not damage. They’re a signature. Made by that psychopath.
A cold thread of rage moves through me. I hold still and let it pass because if I don’t, I’ll put my fist through the motel wall, and he needs to sleep.
I should have fucking killed her.
The damage she did is still written on his body. Some of it will fade. Some won’t. However long it takes—every scar I can treat, every conditioned response I can help him unlearn—I’m here for it.
I trace one of the silver lines with my fingertip. Light. Barely touching.
The muscle underneath contracts. His head turns on the pillow. His arm tightens on my hip. Even half-asleep, his body knows where I am.
His eyes open. No flinch. No panic. No scan of the room.
He smiles at me.
Sleepy. Unguarded. Like this is the most ordinary thing in the world.
It nearly undoes me.
His face has changed since I first saw him at Ravenclaw. The hollows under his eyes have filled. The gaunt look is gone. His jaw has a set to it now that has nothing to do with the wolf—just strength. And his eyes, blue and steady, are clear in a way I’m not used to. Not the wariness, or the wild fury when the wolf took over. Something between those extremes. Something settled.
All the versions of him I’ve known—broken, quiet, terrified, wild, tender—all in one face, looking at me like I’m the first thing he wants to see.
“Hey,” he says, voice thick with sleep.
“Hey.”
“You’re staring.”
“I’m looking. There’s a difference.”
He turns his head on the pillow. “See anything interesting?”
I trace his jaw with my thumb. The stubble catches against my skin. “You’re beautiful. You know that?”
The smile shifts, flickers. “I’m scarred.”
“I know. I don’t care.” I lean down and press my mouth against the corner of his. “Still beautiful.”
He’s quiet. His hand covers mine on his jaw.
