Michael stared at me. His heart was doing that jackrabbit thing again, but this time it felt different. Less fear, more something else I couldn't quite name.
“You can smell exhaustion?”
“I can smell everything. The beer on your breath. The sawdust in your hair. The coffee you had this morning, which was four cups minimum. The laundry detergent you use, the shampoo you ran out of three days ago and replaced with hand soap.” I paused. “You need to buy more shampoo.”
“That's...” Michael shook his head, but there was something that might have been a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “That's incredibly invasive.”
“That's wolves.”
“How do you turn it off?”
“We don't.”
“So you just walk around smelling everyone's business all the time?”
“Pretty much.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“You get used to it.” I shrugged. “Most scents are background noise. You learn to filter. But strong emotions, physical distress, illness... those cut through. Hard to ignore.”
“And I'm broadcasting physical distress.”
“You're broadcasting a lot of things.” I met his eyes, held them. “None of which say 'I'm fine.'”
Michael held my gaze for a long moment. Then, finally, something in him seemed to give. Not break. Just... soften. Like a door that had been locked for months finally creaking open.
“I'm not fine,” he admitted quietly. “I haven't been fine in a long time.”
“I know.”
“But I'm still standing.”
“I know that too.”
“And I don't need to be rescued, Daniel. I'm not some damsel waiting for the big bad Alpha to swoop in and fix everything. I just need...” He stopped. Started again. “I don't know what I need. That's the problem.”
“Maybe you need to eat something that isn't liquid.”
Michael laughed. Surprised and genuine, like it had escaped before he could catch it. “That's your solution? Food?”
“Food, sleep, and someone to hold the trim while you nail it. Not necessarily in that order.”
“You want to hold my trim?”
“That's what I said.”
“That's...” Michael's mouth curved. Not quite a smile, but closer than anything I'd seen from him in months. “That sounded dirty.”
“It wasn't meant to.”
“It sounded dirty anyway.”
I felt heat climb the back of my neck. My wolf was doing something complicated in my chest, something that felt like pleased and embarrassed and hungry all at once.
“Are you going to let me help or not?”
Michael studied me for a long moment. His eyes were still shadowed, still carrying that bone-deep exhaustion, but there was something else there now. Something that looked almost like curiosity.
