Now I’m looking.
The wolf has been aware of her since the locked room, her scent, her voice, the pull of her that even unconscious, I couldn’t ignore. But the wolf’s awareness is territorial. Magnetic. It doesn’t have the language for what I’m seeing now.
The morning light catches the line of her collarbone where the jacket has slipped. The curve of her calf against the floorboards. The way her lips are slightly parted, and the shadow her lashes throw across her cheekbone. She’s looking at me with something more open than the clinical focus I’m used to. Like she was watching before she spoke, and what she saw isn’t what she expected.
She’s beautiful. The man knows that. The wolf knew the feeling of her before he knew she was beautiful, and the difference between those two things is the difference between instinct and sight. Both of them are looking at her now.
“Morning,” I say. My voice is rough, but not because I haven’t used it for so long.
“Morning.” Her eyes move to the window. “What were you doing?”
“Listening.” I glance back at the trees. “To the bird.”
“I heard you.” She pauses. “You were whistling.”
I don’t know what to say to that. The whistle feels private, something from the part of me that the facility didn’t own. But she heard it, and she’s looking at me the way she looked when I fixed the wound pressure last night. Like she’s adjusting a picture.
“You should eat,” she says, and then catches herself. “We don’t have anything to eat.”
“No.”
“Or drink.”
“No.”
She looks at me. I look at her. The absurdity of the situation sits between us—two wolves on a mountain with nothing.
“How do you feel?” she asks.
I take stock. My ribs hurt. The wound on my side is stiff but not bleeding. My feet are tender from the rocks. My muscles ache. But the fog is lighter than it’s been in weeks. The words are closer.
“Clearer,” I say.
She tilts her head. “Clearer how?”
“Words are…not so far away.” I tap my temple, then my mouth. “My mind…works.”
She nods slowly. “You’re more coherent today.”
I am. The sentences are still slow—each word placed deliberately before I let it out—but they’re holding. The bridge between thinking and speaking seems more stable.
She pushes off the wall and crosses to me, then stands beside me at the window. I can feel her warmth, and my wolf presses toward it without urgency. Just leaning.
“Can I see your side?” she asks. She doesn’t immediately move to put her hand on me, and something loosens in my chest.
“I like that,” I say.
“Like what?”
“When you ask.”
She’s quiet. Her eyes are on my face.
“When I ask to touch you?” she says.
“Yeah. Always ask.”
The words come out simple. Not a speech. A line drawn in the simplest way I can draw it. Her expression softens.
