Ipause at the mouth of the hallway instead of announcing myself, half hidden by the corner that opens into the living room. Lurking in the shadows of my own home should feel absurd. It doesn’t. Not when it’s Noa who owns my focus. Is it really stalking when it’s my own mate?
I decide it isn’t, even if that means I’m lying to myself.
She’s mine. If anyone has earned the right to look, to take her in without apology, it’s me.
The truth is that I’m afraid if I stop looking, if I blink or step away out of the room too long or let myself relax even a fraction, she’ll slip out of reach.
I’m still caught up in the high of the last week and a half, still partially convinced it might all dissolve, slip through my fingers like ash, if I examine it too closely. The party. My public declaration for her. The evening spent snowed in at the motel. The way she’s put her trust in my palm without demanding I continue to earn it back piece by fragile piece. The pack sees her differently now. I see it every day. Where there was once hesitation, there is acceptance. Where there was suspicion, there is loyalty. Noa has claimed her place among us with her special brand of quiet grace.
Noa has accepted me as much as she can without crossing the final line she still guards with iron resolve.
My bite.
I understand why and I remind myself of the reasons, repeating them to myself like a daily prayer. But understandingdoesn’t soften the resentment that’s been festering with every passing day. Not toward her. Never that. Toward the delay. Toward the growing risk. And more importantly, toward what it’s doing to her.
She’s getting worse. The sickness is progressing, no matter how carefully she still tries to hide it from me, from everyone. I see the exhaustion she shrugs off like it’s nothing—the way she’s been sleeping longer into the day, disappearing earlier at night to crawl into my bed. The way she’s no longer able to get warm unless my body is wrapped around hers, shivering when I’m not touching her. The nosebleed she tried to clean up before I caught her this morning, eyes filling with quiet shame when she realized she hadn’t been quick enough and I saw the blood on her face.
She believes she can make it to her heat. That I can bite her in those early hours and set everything right.
I’m not convinced she has that kind of time left.
That spike during the snowstorm was a warning shot. A flare erupting in the dark to tell me just how close to the edge we are. Every instinct I carry is screaming now—too loud to ignore—that time is thinning, stretching tight enough to start tearing at the edges. I can feel it in my bones down to the marrow. The storm sirens are blaring; no amount of denial can silence them now.
I’m trying so fucking hard to respect her wishes and give her what she’s asking for. To grant her every scrap of extra time she needs. But if it comes down to it, if waiting means losing her, I won’t hesitate. I’ll sink my teeth into the smooth skin of her throat and bind her to me, consequences be damned.
I can live with her fury. I can carry it, shoulder it, may even deserve it after everything. What I cannot survive is her absence. I’d rather risk her hatred than walk this earth without her, even if the distance between us only lasts long enough for me to close my eyes and follow her into the darkness.
The thought of losing her has my throat tightening, nausea rising, and the pit in my stomach twists into something toxic and ugly.
“What are we staring at?”
The whisper at my shoulder startles me out of my spiral. I turn my head and find Rhosyn there, her profile lit softly by the spill of late morning light, earthy-green eyes fixed on the same view I’ve been greedily devouring.
“Well,” she scoffs softly. “That’s on me bothering to ask. I should’ve known you’d be lurking. Does Noa know you drool over her from dark corners?”
She reaches up and mock-wipes at my chin.
I bat her hand away, teeth flashing in a warning I don’t mean. “Shut up.”
She grins, unfazed, and turns her attention back to Noa. “What’s she doing?”
“Stealing one of the couch pillows,” I mutter, eyes never leaving my walking obsession. “And the sweatshirt I left on the back of the chair last night.”
Noa abandons the original pillow she’d selected, walking on quiet feet to the other side of the L-shaped sectional and scooping up a different option. She looks deceptively peaceful. Focused. At ease. And the lie guts me.
It also needles at me that, after all the minutes I’ve stood here, she hasn’t sensed me yet. That she can’t smell or hear me from this distance. As a wolf, she should be able to sense something so simple. She’s admitted to me that some of her senses have also fallen victim to this sickness along with everything else her body is fighting against, and I hate it. My wolf does too.
Her vulnerability sets my teeth on edge.
My jaw tightens, molars grinding as another wave of frustration flares and fades again.
Rhosyn hums. “Is it really‘stealing’,” she asks mildly, casting me a sidelong look, “if you keep leaving your clothes everywhere for her tofind?”
I glower at her, not appreciating how closely she’s been monitoring my groveling tactics.
“What?” Her eyes roll is accompanied by an infuriatingly innocent shrug. “Was I supposed to pretend you haven’t been scattering pieces of your wardrobe all over the house for her to collect like some bizarre mating scavenger hunt or ritual?”
She’s not wrong. I’ve been doing just as she says since the day Noa came home. Since the moment she stepped back into this territory she never should have been forced from.
