There’s silence. It stretches between us like a chasm, wide and echoing.
I finally look at her.
She’s sitting with her hands in her lap, gaze steady, face pale but not afraid. Not angry. Just... listening.
“I left,” I say, quieter now. “Ran as far north as I could. I swore I wouldn’t speak to another soul, wouldn’t let anyone near me again. Not unless I was ready to kill or be killed.”
She moves then. Reaches across the space between us and lays her hand over mine.
Her fingers are soft, warm despite the cold air, and her skin presses against the scar that runs across my knuckles like it belongs there.
“You’re not your past,” she whispers.
I want to pull away.
I want to tear my hand back and growl something cruel, something that’ll make her stop looking at me like that, like I’m worth anything more than a loaded weapon with a broken safety.
But I don’t. Because her hand doesn’t tremble. She doesn’t flinch from the worst of me.
“You don’t know what that means,” I rasp. “You didn’t see what I did. You didn’t see what I became.”
“No,” she says, still holding on. “But I see what you are now.”
The bear stirs. Not violent. Not angry.
Hungry.
Not for blood. For her.
For the comfort in her voice, the trust in her touch, the maddening way she looks at me like I’m still a man and not just a shadow of one.
“You should be afraid,” I say. “You should run. If you were smart?—”
“If I were smart, I wouldn’t have come out here at all,” she says, a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “But I did. And I stayed. And you saved me. Not once, not twice, but every time it mattered.”
My throat works around words I can’t say. She squeezes my hand.
“You didn’t massacre that village,” she says gently. “Your rage did. The pain they pushed into you. The trap they set. That wasn’t your choice, Cassian. That was your breaking point.”
I don’t answer. I can’t.
Because if I do, I’ll say things I’m not ready to say. I might let go of the last wall keeping me from sinking into everything she is.
The fire cracks behind us. The wind hums low outside. She leans forward, resting her forehead lightly against mine.
I sit there, letting her hold me steady in the silence, while the bear presses closer than ever, aching to rise, aching to claim.
But I don’t let him.
Not tonight.
12
ANGIE
Warmth blooms where our foreheads touch, a fragile point of contact against the cabin’s deepening chill. His breath ghosts across my mouth, uneven, shallow. Still braced for retreat. My fingers slide from his hand, tracing the rigid tension corded in his forearm instead. He tenses further. Muscle ripples under skin like stone shifting.
He’s terrified.
