He looked away toward the wildflowers. Toward the place where Claire’s ashes fed impossible color.
“It tried,” he said quietly. “Some days it still does.”
My chest ached like something was prying it open from the inside.
I squeezed his hand harder, needing the contact like oxygen.
“Then…” I swallowed. “Then don’t stand alone anymore.”
Daniel turned back to me.
And in that look—steady, heavy, certain—I felt something settle.
Not closure.
Not peace.
Butchoice.
“I’m here,” I said, because I needed him to hear it. Needed him to believe it. “Even when I’m a mess. Even when I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Daniel’s fingers laced through mine. “Good.”
The wind moved through the branches overhead, and the flowers swayed like the land itself was listening.
I smiled at him, and something in his expression cracked open. Something that had been locked away for fifteen years finally finding a key. “Daniel. I need to ask you something.”
“What?”
“Will you show me your wolf?”
His eyebrows rose. “What?”
“I've seen you shift. In battle, when everything was chaos and violence and survival. But I've never seen you—just you. The wolf without the Alpha. The animal without the war.” I squeezed his hand. “I want to see all of you. Every part.”
Daniel stared at me for a long moment. Something moved behind his eyes. Fear, maybe. Or wonder.
“You want to see me,” he said slowly. “The real me.”
“I want to see everything you've been hiding. Everything you've been scared to show anyone.” I held his gaze. “If you'll let me.”
The silence stretched. Then Daniel stood, pulling me up with him. He stepped back, creating space between us, and his hands went to the buttons of his flannel.
He stripped off the flannel. The t-shirt underneath. His boots, his jeans, until he stood naked in the afternoon light, and I saw every scar, every line, every mark that told the story of a man who'd spent his whole life fighting to protect others.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Always.”
The shift took him between one heartbeat and the next.
Bone cracked and reformed. Muscle tore and rebuilt. Skin erupted with fur that caught the filtered sunlight and turned it silver. And where Daniel had stood, a wolf now crouched.
I dropped to my knees in the wildflowers. Reached out my hand, palm up, like I was approaching something wild and uncertain.
“Hey,” I said softly. “There you are.”
The wolf stepped forward. Pressed his massive head into my palm.
