The corner of his lip twitches but he doesn’t argue, which tells me how deep the wound runs. His shirt clings dark to his ribs, fabric stuck to skin, and when I peel it away his wince is silent, which makes it worse somehow. I press my lips to the tight line of his jaw before I set to work, as if one kiss can soften a lifetime of grit.
The graze isn’t fatal, shallow enough for stitches, but the bruise spreading across his side blooms dark as midnight. I clean carefully, talking as I work because silence feels heavierthan blood. “You fought like balance itself, not because you were holding the bear back, but because you chose every strike. That wasn’t luck, Cassian. That was control.”
He watches my hands instead of my face. “I wanted the end more than I should have, and still I heard you.” His voice is rough, like every word scrapes. “That felt like proof of something I never thought I’d have again.”
I tie off the first stitch, leaning in to press my lips gently against the new seam. “Proof is my favorite thing. I’ll remind you of this whenever you forget.”
The antiseptic stings, his muscles jump beneath my palm, and I anchor him with touch until the burn eases. Then I kiss the scar at his flank, the one that makes him flinch. He tries to stop me, says my name like a warning, but I don’t pull back. Reverence is medicine too.
One by one I cover him—salve and linen, careful thread, soft words. A scrape on his arm, a cut on his shoulder, the hidden burns from a past he doesn’t speak of. Each one I tend, then seal with a kiss, until his body looks less like a battlefield and more like a map I intend to guard.
When I hand him broth, I hold the mug while he drinks, sparing him the small betrayal of a trembling hand. He empties it and I press another into his palm. This time he smirks faintly, the ghost of a tease, and I pounce on it, saying, “Doctor’s orders. And you should know I falsify charts if patients don’t comply.” That gets me a low laugh, quiet but real, and I hide it away like treasure.
The dogs barge in, shaking off snow. Skipper noses Cassian’s knee before dropping at my feet, sighing like the pack is finally accounted for. I scratch his chest until his tail thumps the floor, and for a breath the room feels whole.
I climb onto the bench between Cassian’s knees, careful not to disturb the bandage, though I don’t let space stay betweenus. His hand comes to my waist, steady and warm, and I rest my forehead against his. The stove paints his face gold, shadows cutting along his jaw, and for once he doesn’t hide behind silence.
“I’ve stood among my own kind and felt like a shadow in human skin,” he says slowly, like he’s setting down bricks for a wall he hopes will hold. “Tonight I sit here with you, and I feel more human than I did in a decade of pretending.” He pauses, eyes flicking to mine. “When I walked back in, the small part of me that always searched for an exit looked for you instead.”
My throat tightens and I cup his jaw, thumb brushing the coarse stubble. “Then let me give you everything. The man who chooses mercy, the beast who’ll fight the world before it touches me, the boy who still believes he doesn’t deserve space, and the fire you keep hidden because you think it’ll frighten me. I want all of it, Cassian.”
His eyes close as if the words settle somewhere untouched. When they open again they’re softer, though still fierce. He kisses the heel of my palm, then the center, reverent in a way that steals my breath. “I don’t know how to carry gentleness without breaking it,” he admits. “You’ll have to teach me.”
“Lesson one,” I say, keeping my voice firm, “you tell me when it hurts, even if it isn’t bleeding. Lesson two, you let me share the load. Lesson three, when the bear presses close, we feed him safety, not shame. Lesson four, if you forget any of these, I’ll remind you with kisses and soup until you remember again.”
This time his laugh is fuller, vibrating against my mouth when he kisses me. It isn’t hurried, isn’t hungry. It’s deliberate, like a vow drawn out slow. When he pulls back his cheek rests against my temple, his pulse steady under my lips.
We bank the stove, pull the quilt across his lap, and I curl against his side, his arm coming around me in a way that isn’t a cage but a promise. He doesn’t speak the vow I feel thrummingin him, but he doesn’t need to. His hand settles on my hip, firm and sure, and his eyes cut once to the door like he dares the world to try.
“Sleep,” I whisper, soft but commanding. His eyes lower, then close, and I listen to the rhythm of his breathing, steady as any heartbeat I’ve ever trusted. My hand rests over the fresh stitches, and I let myself believe that what we’re weaving here is stronger than scars, stronger than fear, stronger even than the storm outside.
For the first time, the hall doesn’t feel like a place we’re hiding. It feels like home.
25
CASSIAN
The night feels heavier than the storm outside, as if the ice hall itself knows the words I have buried too long are pressing against my teeth. The stove glows low, firelight licking the stones with weak gold, and Angie sits cross-legged on the quilt, mending a tear in her jacket as if we are not standing on the edge of something vast and inevitable. Her voice hums now and then, soft and thoughtless, and it unsettles me more than silence.
I pace the room because my body doesn’t know how to be still when the truth is clawing its way out of me. My boots grind snow into the floorboards, and she glances up only once, her eyes bright, waiting, knowing I will break before she does.
The words come, rough and splintered. “I can’t stay here.”
Her needle stills. She looks at me with that unwavering calm that makes men underestimate her until they’re choking on their surprise. “You mean the cabin? Or the ice?”
“The exile,” I answer, voice low but hard. “It’s over. Roman knows too much. He won’t stop. And the Pact…” I drag in a breath that tastes like regret. “The Pact is stirring again. I feel it.”
She sets the jacket aside and leans forward, hands resting on her knees like she’s bracing herself not against me but with me. “Then we go. Wherever this takes you, it takes me too.”
I want to tell her no before the words even finish leaving her mouth. My hands curl into fists at my sides. “Angie, you deserve a life in the sun, not one spent chasing shadows with a man who has blood on his hands.”
She stands, closing the space between us, small but unshaken, lifting her chin so her eyes meet mine without fear. “You keep saying what I deserve, but you never ask me what I want. I chose this. I chose you. And choice is love, Cassian.”
The room falls quiet. My chest tightens, the bear pacing restless beneath my skin. Her words strike like a truth I’ve avoided too long.
I turn away before I let myself soften too quickly. The ice outside groans as if it remembers, and memory pulls me back to the Pact—the ones I left behind when I broke, when I ran.
I see Darius first. He was the leader even when we were young, his wolf eyes sharp, his voice cutting through chaos like a blade. He carried command not like a burden but like a mantle he had been born to wear. Beside him, Mary, his younger sister, fierce and unyielding, her loyalty the kind that could bend steel. I remember the way she used to laugh at me, calling me too serious, too brooding, but she never doubted when the fight came.
