His hand pauses.
"Do you do that every month?"
"He needs it."
"That's not what I asked."
He doesn't answer.
"How long has he been struggling with shifts?"
"Since his first. A year ago."
"That's a long time to be scared of the moon."
"He's not scared." The knife scrapes the plate. "His body fights the change. The bones don't—" He stops and sets the knife down. "It hurts him more than it should."
My hands are in my lap. They want to be doing something—sorting, stacking, rolling. I find a stick near my boot and start stripping bark.
"And you sit with him."
"Someone has to."
I look at him. "That's my line."
His eye meets mine and there's something in it that wasn't there a minute ago, something amused, and I watch him just sit with the fact that he stole my words.
"I know," he says.
"You know."
I stare at him. "Keer. Did you just—are you teasing me right now? Because that is what that felt like and I need to know if I'm having a stroke or if the Alpha of this pack just made a joke at my expense, and I honestly don't know which would be more alarming."
"Both can be true."
"That is NOT a comforting answer."
He cuts another piece of meat, calm as anything, like he hasn't just rearranged my entire understanding of what this man is capable of in polite conversation.
"You just did it AGAIN," I say. "That was another one. That was a follow-up joke. Who are you."
"Someone who enjoys his dinner."
"That is a NON-ANSWER."
"It's accurate."
He cuts another piece of meat with that same calm steadiness, and I'm about to accuse him of stalling when I see it happen—the corner of his mouth lifts, actually lifts, into something that is unmistakably a small private smile, and it stays there for a full second before he even tries to smooth it out, and I almost fall off the wall because Keer is smiling and it's at me and I am not prepared for any of it. I'm sitting here on cold ground with a half-stripped stick in my hand realizing that Keer has been funny this entire time and has just been quietly keeping it to himself like some kind of monastic deadpan hermit, which is honestly rude, and also that his face does that when he smiles, which is information I did not have two seconds ago and can never un-have, and I'm going to have to think about that later because right now I'm too busy trying not to grin like an idiot at a man who I'm now learning has a smile and uses it sparingly, apparently as a weapon.
The plate is half-empty between us and the garlic smell is still in the air and the cold is coming up through the ground and I swear to god if he does it a third time I'm going to lose it.
"Who cooks for you?"
"What?"
"Normally. Before I showed up and started assaulting your fire pits with seasoning. Who makes your food?"
"I eat what the pack eats."
