"I know you're not ready," he said. "I know you're still fighting this. Fighting us. That's okay. I'll wait. However long it takes, I'll wait. But I need you to understand — you're my pack. My family. My mate. And I don't leave my pack." I didn't know what to say. The wolf sat heavy in my hands, weighted with years of longing and patience and quiet, steadfast love. The cabinet full of carvings stood open behind me, one hundred and fifty-six weeks of missing me transformed into art.
He pulled me against his chest, and I went willingly, pressing my face into the warm cotton of his shirt, breathing in cedar and woodsmoke and home.
"I don't know how to do this," I admitted, the words muffled against his chest. "I don't know how to just... let go. Stop fighting."
"You don't have to know how," he rumbled, one massive hand cradling the back of my head, the other pressed flat against my lower back. "Just stop fighting so hard. We'll catch you. I'll catch you. Every time. I promise." He guided me back to the couch, settling down with me in his lap again, the wolf carving still clutched in my hands. The wood stove crackled. Sawdustmotes danced in the afternoon light. His heartbeat was steady against my back.
"You feel that?" Caleb murmured, his lips brushing my hair. "The bond. When you stop fighting." I did feel it. The screaming tension that usually lived in my chest had gone quiet. The bond between us hummed contentedly instead of clawing for attention. Peace. Something I'd almost forgotten existed.
"It's supposed to feel like this," he continued. "All the time. When you let us love you. When you stop running." I closed my eyes. Let his warmth seep into me. Let his scent fill my lungs. Let the steady rhythm of his heartbeat anchor me to the present moment.
"I'm not running," I whispered. "Not right now."
"Good." His arms tightened around me. "Stay. Just... stay."
I stayed. For a little while, wrapped in the arms of my gentlest Alpha, surrounded by evidence of his devotion, I let myself imagine what it might feel like to stop running forever.
It felt like breathing after being underwater.
It felt like coming home.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
AVA
Ethan didn't carry me to his study. He asked.
"Would you come with me?" He stood in the doorway of the living room, green eyes watching me from behind his glasses, one hand extended in invitation. "There's something I'd like to show you." It was such a stark contrast to Caleb's wordless scooping, to Mason's commands, to Leo's chaos, that I found myself agreeing before I could think of a reason to refuse.
"Okay," I said, setting down the book I'd been pretending to read and taking his hand. My fingers trembled slightly as they met his, betraying the nerves I was trying to hide. His fingers closed around mine, warm, steady, precise. Everything about Ethan was precise. The way he moved, the way he spoke, the way he held my hand like he'd calculated exactly how much pressure to apply. Not too tight, not too loose. Just right. He led me through the cabin to a room I'd only glimpsed before, a closed door at the end of the hallway that I'd assumed was storage or a closet. When he opened it, I realized how wrong I'd been.
The study was smaller than Caleb's workshop but no less impressive. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined three walls, packed with medical texts, research journals, and thick binders labeled with dates and subject headings. A massive oak desk dominated the center of the room, its surface organized with almost obsessive neatness, laptop centered perfectly, papers stacked in precise piles, pens arranged by color in a ceramic holder.
It was the fourth wall that made me stop breathing.
Charts. Graphs. Photographs. All of me.
My medical records from childhood, annotated in Ethan's neat handwriting. Growth charts tracking my development from age twelve to eighteen. Hormone panels with certain values circled in red. Photographs from family gatherings, zoomed in on my face, with notes about pupil dilation and skin pallor scribbled in the margins.
"What the hell is this?" I breathed, my hand going slack in his grip. Ethan didn't let go. If anything, his fingers tightened slightly, keeping me anchored.
"Research," he said simply, his green eyes meeting mine without flinching. "On you. On your biology. On what the suppressants were doing to your body."
"This is..." I pulled my hand free, stepping closer to the wall, my eyes scanning the documents. "Ethan, this is insane. You've been studying me like I'm some kind of experiment."
"You're not an experiment." His voice was quiet but firm, and I heard him move closer behind me, felt the warmth of his body at my back. "You're the woman I love. And I watched you poison yourself for six years while I had no way to stop it."
I turned to face him. At twenty-seven, Ethan was all sharp angles and controlled intensity — high cheekbones, a strong jaw, dark hair kept short and neat. His green eyes were the only thing soft about him, and even those could turn clinical in aninstant. Right now, they held something I rarely saw from him: vulnerability.
"Show me," I said, surprising myself. "Explain it to me. All of it." Something flickered across his face, relief, maybe, or gratitude. He nodded once and moved to his desk, pulling out a thick binder and setting it on the surface between us.
"Sit," he said, gesturing to a worn leather armchair positioned beside the desk. "This will take a while." I sat. He pulled his desk chair around to face me, close enough that our knees almost touched, and opened the binder.
"I've been tracking your health since you presented," Ethan began, his long fingers flipping to the first page, a chart showing hormone levels over time. "You presented at fifteen. And within months, you started taking suppressants."
He pointed to a sharp decline in one of the lines. "This is your estrogen. This is your progesterone. And this—" He tapped a red line that dropped like a cliff edge. "This is your overall reproductive health index."
"I knew the suppressants had side effects," I said quietly, staring at the damning data. "Headaches, nausea, fatigue. But the doctors said it was normal."
