"And you stayed." It wasn't a question.
"I stayed." He turned to face me fully, his pale blue eyes fierce with emotion, his hand sliding from my cheek to cup the back of my neck. "Didn't deserve to. But I stayed, and every day since then I've tried to become someone worthy."
"You are worthy." My voice came out fierce, cracking with emotion. "You are, Sawyer."
"So are you." His other hand rose to brush a strand of hair from my face, his touch reverent. "Whatever you're running from—it doesn't matter here. Not to us."
"You're the first person who didn't flinch." His voice was rough with wonder, his pale eyes searching mine. "When I told you what I was. Everyone else looks at me different after. Scared, or pitying. You didn't flinch."
"Neither did you." The words came out raw, honest. "When you heard about me. About running, about everything. You didn't look at me like I was broken."
"Because you're not." His voice was fierce, absolute, his hands tightening on me. "You're surviving. Same as me. There's a difference."
The air between us was thick with understanding, with recognition. Two broken people who'd somehow found each other.
"Thank you." My voice was rough. "For trusting me with this."
"Thank you for listening." His thumb traced my jaw, feather-light. "For staying." We sat like that until the shadows grew long,his hands gentle on my face, my hands covering his, both of us breathing the same air and not needing to fill it with words.
When we finally packed up and mounted the horses for the ride home, something had shifted between us—something fundamental and irreversible. As the stable came into view, Sawyer pulled Scout alongside Copper. His hand reached across the space between us and found mine, his rough fingers threading through mine and holding on.
"Same time tomorrow?" His voice was gruff, uncertain, his pale eyes almost shy beneath the fall of his copper hair. "If you want."
Something bloomed in my chest—warm and bright and terrifying.
"Yeah." I squeezed his hand, feeling him squeeze back. "I want." The smile that crossed his weathered face was small, barely there, but it transformed him completely. Made him look younger, softer, like the man he might have been if life had been kinder.
We rode back to the stable hand in hand, and when we finally had to let go to dismount, I felt the loss like a physical ache. Underneath the loss was hope….and hope, I was learning, was the most terrifying and wonderful thing of all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ASTER
Something was wrong with me.
I understood the scent-seeking now—Nolan had explained it weeks ago, and I'd made peace with the way I gravitated toward their things, the way their combined smells made something in my chest settle. That part made sense. That part I could accept.
This was different. I couldn't sleep. Couldn't get comfortable no matter how many times I rearranged the pillows or shifted the blankets or turned from one side to the other. The bed was soft, the room was warm, their scents surrounded me—Reid's flannel draped over my chair, Kol's hoodie at the foot of my bed, Nolan's henley tucked under my pillow where I'd stopped pretending I wasn't keeping it.
Something was still wrong, and I couldn't figure out what.
It had been three days since my afternoon with Sawyer at the fence line. Three days of pack breakfasts and easy afternoons and evenings spent in the living room surrounded by four Alphas who looked at me like I belonged there. Three days of feeling more at home than I ever had in my life.
So why couldn't I sleep?
I threw off the covers and sat up, frustration clawing at my chest. The room felt wrong—not the scents, those were right, those were perfect—but the space itself. Too open. Too exposed. Too much like a place I was passing through rather than a place I belonged.
Without quite deciding to, I got up and started moving things. The dresser went from the wall near the window to the corner by the closet. The bed I pushed further into the corner, angling it so the headboard touched two walls instead of one. Better. Safer. More enclosed.
I stacked the pillows differently—no, that wasn't right either—then unstacked them and tried again. I needed them higher. Needed walls. Needed?—
I stopped, breathing hard, sweat dampening my hairline, and stared at what I was doing. This wasn't scent-seeking. This was something else entirely. Something deeper, more primal, that I didn't have a name for. The knock on my door made me jump so hard I nearly fell over the dresser I'd just moved. I pressed a hand to my racing heart and tried to make my voice come out normal.
"Yeah?" The word came out too high, too breathless, my chest heaving from exertion and surprise.
"It's Kol." His voice was warm through the door, tinged with concern, and I could hear the soft shuffle of his bare feet on the hardwood outside my room. "Can I come in? I heard you moving stuff around. Again."
Again. Because this was the third time this week I'd rearranged everything in the middle of the night.
