Page 72 of Unveiled

“Aye,” Connor murmured. “Complicated’s one word.”

“Is it unwelcome?”

Connor’s jaw tightened, not from anger, but from the effort of finding words that didn’t betray too much. He shifted his weight, his fingers curling around the railing. “It’s not unwelcome,” he said finally, his voice low. “Just unexpected.”

Adrian’s shoulders eased. “Good.”

Connor shot him a sideways look. “Why’s that good?”

“Because I don’t want to fight this alone,” he said. “Any of it.”

Connor’s breath misted in the air, thin and quiet. “You’re not alone.”

“And you?” Adrian asked. “Are you?”

Connor turned his face skyward. The stars were pale behind a drifting cloud. He wasn’t used to answering such questions, or to being asked them. “No,” he said at last. “Not anymore.”

The wind swept a curl of Adrian’s hair across his forehead, and something inside Connor eased a fraction, like a knot loosening. The bond pulsed again, soft and warm, but not demanding, simply acknowledging what it was between them.

Adrian smiled, small, real, and tired. “We should get some rest,” he said gently. “Tomorrow will bring more questions.”

“Aye.” Connor pushed off the railing. “But we’ll face them.”

“Together?” Adrian asked.

Connor hesitated only a heartbeat. “Aye. Together.”

Their gazes met briefly, quietly, and the night didn’t crackle or whisper or shift. It simply held them. Side by side. Connected.

“I need to shift,” Connor muttered. “Fancy a run?”

Adrian grinned. “I thought you’d never ask.”

The sky was filled with deep purples spreading across the horizon like spilled ink. Frost clung to the heather fields, catching the weak glow of the dying sun. The air tasted sharp and metallic the way it sometimes did before the Veil shivered.

Connor stood at the edge of the clearing, his shoulders tense beneath the weight he’d been carrying for days. The wolf in him paced under his skin, restless, sensing what was coming long before his human mind caught up.

Adrian stepped beside him, his breath misting in the cold. “It’s louder tonight,” he murmured.

Connor didn’t need to ask what “it” meant. He felt it too. The pull, the bond, the unseen pressure tugging at the space between them.

“It’s getting harder to ignore,” Connor admitted. He rubbed his chest, wincing at the itch. Adrian placed his hand over Connor’s.

“We’re a right couple, aren’t we?” His laugh was soft, strained. “Trying to be someone the fates always thought we’d be and not understanding much of it.”

Connor snorted. “I’ve never been so damned confused in all my life.”

Wind swept across the glen, rolling over them in a cold wave. The wolves within them recognised each other. Connor exhaled, long and steady. “We need to shift. Together. See if that changes anything.”

Adrian’s brows lifted, surprise flickering for a moment, then acceptance. “All right,” he said quietly. “On your lead.”

They stepped farther into the clearing. For a heartbeat, they simply breathed. The dusk around them, the earth beneath them, the strange thread humming like a live wire between rib and bone evident.

Connor let go. The shift hit him like a rush of heat and instinct, bones moving with remembered precision, skin tightening, fur bursting through. The world sharpened, scents blooming like a thousand unfurling branches. The wolf filled him.

When he lifted his head, Adrian’s wolf stood a few feet away, sleek, dark, and amber-eyed. Smaller than Connor, but fast, alert, radiating tension and something sharper beneath it. Something like recognition.

The thread between them thrummed clearer now, as if shifting peeled away whatever fog dulled it in human form. Adrian’s wolf stepped closer.