Page 47

“Again,” Arlo says with his eyes shut. “The one by my ribs.”

I move lower and let the work occupy everything else. The Doctor, the den, the fence, my claws, and Arlo’s blood on the floor all fall behind the immediate need to close what I opened. Teeth and claws are easy for everyone to understand because they know what damage looks like when it belongs to me. Watching Arlo’s skin seal under my mouth forces something else into the same body.

By the time I sit back, the deepest gashes are gone.

Arlo looks down at his chest. The shirt is ruined and blood covers half his torso, but the skin beneath it is whole except for faint pink lines that fade while we watch.

His hand comes up, and my shoulders jerk tight on instinct.

He only cups my jaw. “My turn.”

I look down and realize my hands are split across the knuckles from the shift, one claw bed torn nearly to the cuticle. Arlo catches my wrist and lifts it, his mouth closing over the largest break. Heat runs through me, and the cut seals beneath his tongue.

We stay on the floor after that, cleaning the blood from each other instead of trying to talk our way around what happened. I use a wet cloth on his chest while he works over the smaller cuts on my arms and hands, and he doesn’t rush me when my fingers start shaking again. I don’t apologize a second time because I can feel what it does to him every time I try.

When we are finally steady enough to stand, I look at the den and feel the rage give way to grief. The Doctor’s scent is everywhere: latex ground into the blankets, disinfectant on Arlo’s hoodie, the blue rug kicked crooked, shirts moved from the places I put them. He opened the center of the room and examined it like the inside of me.

A rough sound catches in my throat and gets out anyway.

Arlo doesn’t move toward the mess. He sits on the blood-streaked floor with both hands open on his knees. “I won’t touch anything unless you ask. Tell me what you want.”

No one waits for instructions from me in a room I am trying to make safe. People tell me when to shift, where to sit, what to eat, when to move, and when to submit. The Doctor came into the one place I built from my own choices and took it apart because he could. Arlo stays where he is and waits for me to decide what happens next.

“Help me put it back.”

He nods once, and we start with the rugs because I need the perimeter first. I tell him which one goes against the wall, which side of the desk stays exactly where it is, and where I want the black hoodie. He follows every instruction without improving anything on his own. When he finds the grey sweater the Doctor handled, he holds it out and waits until I take it from him.

We rebuild the den one piece at a time until the blankets are back in the middle, the shirts line the wall, and the blue rug is folded twice because the edge feels wrong against my leg when it lies flat. The Doctor’s scent does not disappear, and neither does the blood, but the order is mine again because I chose where every piece went and Arlo moved nothing until I told him to.

I shift and crawl into the middle of the nest, the bear fitting where the man no longer does. Arlo is still beside the dresser, bare-chested now, dried blood at his waist and faint pink ghosts where my claws opened him.

I don’t grab him. Instead, I push a heavy pile of blankets aside with my nose and make room against my chest.

Arlo looks at the space, then at me, before kicking off his boots and crawling in. I curl around him and pull the black hoodie between us until his scent starts to cover the latex again. My hum starts somewhere deep in my chest, and when his purr answers against my fur, the room begins to smell like us.

Chapter Twenty-six

Arlo

Grey light leaks through the curtains while Orion is still wrapped around me in bear form, one paw heavy over my thighs and his muzzle shoved against the back of my neck like he spent the whole night making sure I stayed exactly where he put me. Every breath warms the same patch of skin. The den smells like wool, old blood, pine, and us, which is a hell of a lot better than the disinfectant and latex that clung to it yesterday. I stretch carefully and the skin over my chest pulls, smooth where four claws opened me to the ribs. Orion's tongue fixed what his hands did. Still not sure what the fuck I'm supposed to do with that.

The bear grumbles when I shift under him, so I scratch behind one ear and work my fingers down into the thick fur at his neck until the sound drops into something softer. "Kael's waiting." Another rumble rolls straight through my spine, apparently covering Kael, mornings, and probably the concept of leaving this bed at all. "Yeah, I know. Tragic."

The shift starts under my palm before I can get another complaint out of him. Fur draws back, the weight behind me narrowing and changing until Orion is sitting naked in the blankets with a strip of blue rug caught in his beard and half his curls smashed flat to one side. I almost laugh. Then his eyes land on my chest and whatever sleep was left in him disappears.

His hand comes up slowly, stopping just short of the place he tore open, and when he starts to pull it back I catch his wrist and put his palm flat against me. "Still healed." The skin is warm under his thumb when he rubs once across it, and some of the tightness in the bond eases with the motion, his pine-and-earth scent losing the sharp edge it carried the second he woke. I squeeze his wrist and let him go before either of us makes it into a conversation we don't need.

I toss the charcoal trousers onto the dresser while I pull on my boots. "Come if you want. Stay if you don't." Fabric drags over skin behind me before I finish the first lace, and when I glance back he's already in the trousers with the top button open, dragging one of my shirts over his head. The hem nearly hits mid-thigh. Orion catches me looking, his nose wrinkling as a warning hum starts low in his chest, and I go back to my boot because I'm attached to having all ten fingers.

Kael's house is already loud when we get there, woodsmoke and coffee pushing through the cracked door with milk, fox, and enough adult pheromones to make the entryway feel warmer than it is. A pup shrieks somewhere inside and another answers from farther down the hall. Malik opens the door with a greeting already on his mouth, sees the blood dried black along the side of my trousers, and his scent changes fast enough that Orion's head lifts beside me. "What happened?"

"Doctor." Malik steps back immediately and gives us the doorway.

The main room is the usual mess of maps, Council paperwork, toys, and people pretending any of that belongs together. Preston is cross-legged on the rug with a fox pup asleep in his lap while another, caught halfway between forms, has somebody's shoelace between his teeth. Orion pauses just long enough to track the windows, hall, back door, and every adult in the room before moving to the side of the table where the wall covers one shoulder and I cover the other. His arm brushes mine and stays there.

Kael shuts the folder in front of him. "You're late."

Orion's scent is already starting to go bitter, so I hook two fingers through the back of a chair and get it over with. "The Doctor came into the house while I was at the market. Went into the den, moved the blankets, bagged clothes, handled everything Orion uses to ground like he was inventorying a fucking supply cabinet." My hand finds the base of Orion's neck while I'm talking, not because I plan it, just because the tendons there are hard enough to feel through my palm and I want them to stop being that way.