"Since I was a kid." His voice rumbled through his chest into my back. "My grandfather on my mom's side taught me. He was a carpenter. Said I had good hands."
I looked down at those hands, massive, scarred across the knuckles, calloused from years of work. They were wrappedaround my waist with impossible gentleness, careful not to squeeze too hard, careful not to bruise.
"Good hands," I echoed, a small smile tugging at my lips.
"Helped me focus," he continued, his thumb tracing absent patterns on my hip. "Keep my mind quiet when it got too loud." I twisted slightly to look at his face. The scars were stark in the workshop light, three parallel lines cutting across his features. I already knew the story. He'd told me years ago, when I was twelve and too young to know better than to ask.
"Mason helped you get back into carving," I said softly. "After the attack."
He nodded, his ice-blue eyes going distant for a moment. "Said I needed something to do with my hands besides make fists. He was right." His voice was rough with old memories. "We didn't grow up together. Different mothers. I didn't move in with David until I was fourteen, when my mom got sick. Mason was already twenty-one, running operations. He didn't have to look out for me. But he did."
"He chose to," I said, understanding settling into my bones.
"He chose to." His arms tightened around me, pulling me closer against the warmth of his chest. "That's what family is. Not blood. Choices."
He reached over to the nearby workbench, his long arm easily spanning the distance without dislodging me from his lap. When his hand came back, he was holding a carving.
A wolf.
It was breathtaking — larger than the others I'd seen, maybe eight inches tall, carved from dark walnut that had been polished until it gleamed. The wolf was caught mid-stride, head turned as if looking back over its shoulder, eyes alert and knowing. The fur seemed to ripple with movement, each individual strand suggested by the master strokes of his knife.The musculature beneath was anatomically perfect — I could see the tension in its haunches, the power coiled in its shoulders.
"This is for you," Caleb said, pressing the wolf into my hands.
It was heavier than I expected. Solid. Warm from being near the stove.
"Caleb..." I traced the delicate lines of the wolf's fur with my fingertip, afraid to press too hard, afraid to damage something so beautiful.
"Wolves mate for life," he said, his voice rough. "Once they choose their pack, they don't leave. They protect. They provide. They stay, even when it's hard. Even when it hurts."
My throat tightened. "When did you make this?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
"Started it years ago, after you ran, I worked on it a little at a time, whenever I missed you too much to think straight." His breath was warm against my hair, his voice rough with emotion. "Finished it the day we brought you here. It was always meant for you."
I thought about the bird in my box of keepsakes. The sparrow he'd given me the night I fled, wings spread mid-flight, beautiful and delicate and devastating. I'd kept it all these years, even when keeping anything from that life felt like weakness.
"I still have the bird," I admitted quietly. "The one you gave me. That night." His whole body stilled beneath me.
"You kept it?" His voice was barely a whisper, raw with disbelief.
"I kept it." I turned the wolf over in my hands, studying the intricate details, the love and patience carved into every line. "I don't know why. I should have thrown it away. Should have gotten rid of anything that reminded me of you. Of all of you. But I couldn't." His arms tightened around me until I could barely breathe, but I didn't complain. I understood the feeling.
"I made you something every week," he said, his voice thick with emotion. "While you were gone. Fifty-two birds that first year. Then other things. Flowers. Animals. Whatever I was feeling..." A pause, his chest rising and falling against my back. "I have them all. If you want to see."
"Show me," I breathed, curiosity and something deeper pulling at me. He shifted me gently off his lap, setting me on the couch like I was something precious, then rose and moved to a cabinet I hadn't noticed in the corner. When he opened it, my breath caught.
Rows upon rows of small carvings, organized by type. Birds in every species imaginable — the fifty-two from the first year, plus dozens more. Flowers ranging from simple daisies to elaborate roses. Small woodland creatures. Butterflies with paper-thin wings. And at the back, a collection of objects that weren't animals at all, a tiny piano, a miniature book, a small bottle, a microscope. Things that represented the others, I realized. His brothers.
"Three years," I said, my voice barely above a whisper. "You made all of these in three years?"
"One hundred and fifty-six weeks." His voice was rough. "Give or take. One for every week you were gone. Plus the ones I made just because I needed to." I stood on shaky legs and crossed to the cabinet, reaching out to touch a delicate hummingbird, its wings a blur of carved motion.
"Why?" I asked, turning to face him. "Why go through all of this? You could have found another Omega. Someone who wanted to be here. Someone who didn't run." He was quiet for a long moment, his ice-blue eyes holding mine with an intensity that made my heart stutter.
"Do you know what it's like to meet someone and just... know?" Caleb asked finally, his deep voice soft in the quiet workshop. "Not think, not hope, just know. Down in your bones,in a place that doesn't have words. I knew the first time I saw you. You were twelve years old and you asked me about my scars, and you didn't flinch when I told you. You just listened. And I knew."
"Caleb..." I started, but my voice broke on his name, tears pricking at my eyes.
"I didn't choose to love you, Ava," he continued, stepping closer, his massive frame blocking out the light from the windows. "It's not something I decided. It's something I am. I love you the way I breathe. The way my heart beats. It's not a choice. It's a fact." He reached out and cupped my face in his huge hands, so gentle, so impossibly careful.
