"It is for this band," Rowan cut in, her voice crisp as fresh stationery. She stepped fully into the light, tapping her tablet with a stylus. "Designation is biology. Conduct is a choice. We operate on the latter."
I finally stood up, wincing as the blood rushed back into my numb leg. The pins and needles were absolute murder, but I kept my face neutral. I kept my hands where she could see them, hooked loosely in my belt loops, elbows out.
"We aren't stray dogs, Z," I said, keeping the Manchester gravel low in my throat. "We don't chase just because the wind changes direction and brings us something tasty."
That was a lie, partially. My inner wolf was absolutely howling to chase. It wanted to pin her against that peeling brickwork and breathe her in until the scent of ozone and citrus was permanently etched into my sensory cortex. But the humanpart of me, the part that remembered growing up in a house where 'Alpha' meant 'bully', knew that if I took one step she didn’t ask for, she’d be gone. And not just gone, but broken.
She wrapped her arms around herself, looking small in her oversized hoodie. Her gaze darted to Euan, then back to me. "You helped me regulate. By doing... nothing."
"Active nothing," Euan corrected from the shadows, his voice dry and surgical. "Calculated inactivity. There is a distinction."
"We're formalizing it," Rowan announced, pivoting the tablet screen toward us. It was a blank grid, but the header was bold. "The Do-Nothing Protocol. In the event of a biological override or stress response, unless explicit verbal consent is granted, the default action is: Retreat. Secure perimeter. Wait."
Zia stared at the screen. The skepticism in her eyes was a physical weight, breathless and heavy. She looked at Alfie, still guarding the door like a sentinel, his knuckles white on the frame. Then she looked at me, the tattooed brute who’d let her use his ribs as a pillow without trying to cop a feel.
"I have suppressants in my bag," she whispered, the fight draining out of her. "The high-grade stuff. I just need to get to the bus."
"Cal’s already warming the engine," I said, nodding toward the exit.
She hesitated, then nodded before walking past me. She didn't flinch this time, but she kept a wide berth. As she passed Alfie, he turned his head away, exposing his neck, a submissive gesture from a lead Alpha that made my chest ache with pride.
When she was gone, I let out a breath I’d been holding for an hour. The adrenaline flush left me feeling hollowed out. I looked at my hands. They were shaking.
"Furniture," I muttered to the empty room, flexing my fingers to stop the tremors. "I can work with furniture."
TWELVE
Euan
We measure trust in milestones. Or, in my case, precise metric units calculated against the blast radius of my own biological imperative.
When Zia agrees to the proximity tests, she treats it like a gain-staging exercise. Input. Output. Tolerance levels. She approaches the problem with a clipboard and a frown that creases the skin between her eyebrows, an expression I have cataloged asprocessing variable data.
I sit at my producer's desk in the bus’s rear lounge. My hands are flat on the surface, palms down, fingers splayed. Visible. Static. Non-threatening.
"Day One," she announces. Her voice is level, but her heart rate, audible to me even over the hum of the HEPA filtration system, is hovering at 95 BPM. "Ten feet."
She stands by the kitchenette door. Ten feet is exactly 3.048 meters. It is a cavernous distance in a tour bus. It is also close enough that I can smell the ozone clinging to her hair, the sharp, electric tang of her scent pushing through her blockers.
"Acknowledged," I say. My voice sounds scraped, like a needle dragging across vinyl. I clear my throat and try for surgical detachment. "Ten feet. Do you require a visual marker?"
"No." She hugs her clipboard to her chest. "I just need to know you’re not going to... drift."
"I am anchored," I tell her. I keep my eyes on the waveform on my screen, though my peripheral vision is entirely consumed by her. "My coordinates are fixed. Hands visible. Variable: You. Constant: Me."
She watches me for five minutes. I do not move. I do not breathe deeply, lest I inhale too much of her and my pupils blow wide enough to scare her. I code a simple loop, typing one-handed so she can always see the other hand resting on the wood.
"Okay," she breathes out. "Okay. Ten feet is safe."
She retreats. I exhale for the first time in three hundred seconds.
Day Two.
"Eight feet," she says.
She pulls a stool up to the edge of the lounge carpet. 2.43 meters.
This time, she opens her laptop. The sound of her typing is a staccato rhythm that syncs with my pulse. She is working on the mix for the next show. I, on the other hand, am working on keeping my blood inside my veins instead of letting it boil over.
