“You’re shaking.”
“I’m fine.”
“You turned into a wolf twenty minutes ago and now you’re performing first aid with fingers that won’t hold still. In what universe is that fine?”
“You’re hurt.”
“It’s a split lip. I’ve done worse with an X-Acto knife. That happened during a deadline spiral in 2022 and Mika still brings it up. Apparently, I bled on three finished spreads and didn’t notice for an hour.” She caught his wrist. Her grip wrapped around the same spot where he’d held hers the night they kissed—the reversed mirror, her grasp steady where his was not. “I’m okay.”
His gaze was raw. Stripped of every professional distance, every composure, every carefully constructed wall. He looked at her with the full force of his attention and none of his defenses.
“You fought them.” His voice was rough. “With a bookend.”
“And ink. And fixative spray. The gargoyle did most of the heavy lifting, to be fair.”
“You were losing when I arrived.”
“I was improvising when you arrived. Different verb. Much more flattering. I’d also like to point out that I took down two armed men with art supplies, so if we’re keeping score?—”
“We’re not keeping score.”
“—I’m at two and you’re at two. Tied.”
“The third ran.”
“Because of you. So technically you’re at two-and-a-half.” She cocked her head. “Do wolves do math?”
The laugh caught him off guard. A short, involuntary sound that escaped before he could trap it—more air than sound, butit cracked the tension in a way words hadn’t. Her expression shifted. The defiance softened into recognition.
He laughed. In the middle of all this, wrapped in terry cloth on my destroyed floor, with his own side still leaking—he laughed.
His thumb was close enough to her mouth that she registered the warmth near her lower lip. The cut stung. His proximity didn’t.
“You came.” Her tone dropped. “You didn’t hesitate. You tore through my door.”
“I heard the window break.” His voice was quieter now. “From Chelsea.”
“From—” She stopped. “Chelsea. That’s four miles.”
“I hear you. Specifically. Your heartbeat. Your breathing. When the pattern changes—” He stopped. The admission was larger than he’d planned.
“You’re always listening.”
“Yes.”
She turned that over. He braced for the word: invasive. For the word: controlling. For the recognition that what he’d described was surveillance dressed as devotion and she wanted no part of it.
“You heard my window break from four miles away. And you ran.”
“Yes.”
“Not because I called.”
“Because I heard you.”
She launched off the couch.
No warning. No buildup. One second, she was sitting beside him and the next her arms were around his neck, her face buried against the side of his throat, colliding with him hard enough that he rocked backward. The fabric shifted. His cut pulled. She didn’t flinch—her fists bunched in the throw at his shoulders andshe hung on with the kind of grip that saidI am not letting go of this and you cannot make me.
