Wren pulled another one of his shirts over her head—big enough to fall to mid-thigh—and padded barefoot toward the fire. Gunnar stood bare-chested beside it, flipping something in an iron pan, the muscles in his back flexing with each motion.
She swallowed. Hard.
This felt dangerous. Not in the monstrous, clawed, mythical way. Dangerous because it felt normal. Like a morning she could get used to.
“This is weird,” she admitted softly. “Weird in a nice way. Like I woke up in some domestic fantasy with a seven-foot-tall mountain man.”
He didn’t turn, but the corner of his mouth lifted. “A fantasy? I look like a fantasy to you?”
“I mean—” she gestured at him helplessly “—I’ve had worse mornings. Usually fewer muscles. Slightly less fur. Definitely fewer blizzards.”
He glanced over his shoulder, amused. “You think this is normal?”
“Better than normal,” she said before her brain could intervene.
He stilled for a second, spoon hovering over the pan. Something flickered across his face—quick, intense, unreadable—but he masked it with a grunt and a plate shoved in her direction.
“Eat.”
She took the food, sat near the fire, and watched him move around the cave like he’d done this a thousand mornings alone. But today, there were two mugs. Two plates. Two sets of footprints in the snow-dusted stone.
She never should have felt as comfortable as she did. Not here. Not with him.
But she did.
“Gunnar?” she asked softly.
“Hm?”
“This doesn’t feel lonely anymore.”
He paused mid-motion. Slowly, very slowly, he looked at her.
Something changed in his expression. Warmth, maybe. Or longing. Or something deeper he wasn’t ready to name.
His voice, when it came, was low. Almost rough. “No. It doesn’t.”
A shiver ran through her, not from the cold.
But from the feeling that she’d just stepped into something bigger than either of them quite understood.
And the storm outside kept raging while, inside the cave, something gentler, quieter, infinitely more dangerous began to take shape between them.
The storm still raged out, possibly taking on a life of its own after his mother’s magic had conjured it. Inside the cave, the fire snapped and crackled, casting warm orange patterns over the stone. Gunnar liked mornings like this—quiet mornings, predictable mornings.
Except nothing had been predictable since the human arrived.
Wren sat cross-legged near the hearth, her bag beside her, hair mussed from sleep, humming some tuneless little song under her breath. She was always humming. Or talking. Or rearranging something. A whirlwind, a bright streak of color across the gray stone of his home.
And somehow, impossibly, it made the place feel fuller. Less empty.
Gunnar set his carving block on his lap, pulling his knife free. Only when the first shaving curled away did Wren seem to notice.
Her head tipped sideways. “You’re carving again.”
He grunted. Translation:of course.
But she smiled like he’d spoken poetry. “Can I watch?”
