He makes a sound low in his chest. Not the snarl from the day of the ceremony. This is quieter. Closer. A male sound, a wolf sound. My own wolf rises to meet it so fast I lose my footing inside my own skin. The sound comes again, low and guttural, and I realize I’m pressing my thighs together.
Stop it. Just stop, Sable!
His nose grazes the curve of my throat, and my breath stops completely.
“Wait.”
The word slips out too low. Not a command or an order. A request.
For half a heartbeat, nothing changes.
Then his body locks. The hand on my back stops pulling. The fingers around my wrist go motionless. His eyes hold mine, and I watch the fight move through him, jaw tightening, a tendon jumping in his neck, something in him deciding.
His hand opens. One finger. Then another. Then the rest.
He lets go.
No collapse. No sedation dragging him under. He is awake, and he is choosing this.
I don’t move. My wrist is free. The syringe is on the table. The door is behind us. I have the space I need.
I stay with my palm braced against his chest and feel his heart hammering beneath it. The vibration is still there, fainter now, fading as his hand falls away, but I felt it. Something under his skin that isn’t a heartbeat and isn’t fear and has no name I know.
He is shaking. Not visibly. The tremor runs under his muscles, held tight, contained by whatever part of him has just surfaced long enough to make a choice.
His hand falls back to the blanket. His eyes remain on mine. In the morning light, the blue is vivid against the dark tangle of hishair, and his face holds an expression I have never seen on him because I have never seen him conscious and still at the same time.
I step back.
“It’s okay,” I say, though I’m not sure who I’m talking to.
My wrist aches where his fingers were. The skin is already reddening. I curl my hand once to make sure the tendons answer, then reach for the correction dose.
This time, he watches me pick it up.
He sees the syringe, and his whole body goes rigid.
I stop.
The instinct in me says move quickly; sedate before he can react, do the work, keep the room safe.
But his eyes are open. He is here enough to know what I am holding.
“Sedative,” I say, keeping my voice low. “You surfaced too fast.” The explanation sounds ridiculous. Why would this matter to him?
His stare drops to the syringe. His breathing goes shallow.
My wrist throbs.
I should call for help.
Instead, I lower the syringe slightly. Not hiding it. Not advancing. “If they come in here and see you conscious, it’s going to be…complicated.”
I pause, because that’s more than an understatement.
“I’m going to give it in your arm. One injection. Then I’ll step back.”
I don’t know if he understands the words.
