My thoughts lash out like a whip. Hard and unforgiving.“She’s blind.”
The penny drops for Froggy. I see the exact second it clicks. His ears twitch, his posture dips a fraction, but he doesn’t soften. Not even a little.
No, he still looks pissed. Offended. Like my explanation is just one more complication we don’t have time for.
But underneath all that? Something else sparks in his eyes. Something wary.
Buff softens immediately.“Is that why her eyes looked so… wrong?”
A snarl tears out of me before I can swallow it.“There is nothing wrong with her.”
Froggy snorts.“We were at a sanctuary for the differently abled. Obviously something was?—”
“There. Is. Nothing. Wrong. With. Her.”
Each word drops heavier, darker, a warning vibrating straight out of my chest.
Silence slams over the forest. Even the wind seems to still.
Buff lifts his ears, slow and careful, like he’s approaching a wounded animal, or a dangerous one. His instincts are on the money. Because right now, I feel dangerous. Like my temper is thinner than spider silk and just as deadly.
“I’m just saying her eyes didn’t look like anything I’ve ever seen.”His voice is soft, but my muscles still lock up.
He’s right. Her eyes weren’t like anything I’ve seen either. Not damaged. Not broken. Just… different. A different kind of being. A different kind of strength.
And in that the second, I realized what that difference meant. The second I scented her vulnerability entwined with something fierce and quietly unshakable, something lodged under my skin like a hook.
A hook I can’t seem to dislodge.
I force myself to breathe. Inhaling slow, controlled breaths, I try to drag the air past a knot in my chest.
“Sometimes that happens when people go blind,”I say.“Doesn’t mean anything is wrong with her.”
Froggy’s frown deepens, but his voice softens like it usually does when something actually rattles him.“She reached for you like you, a fucking wolf, were safe.”
The words punch low. I swallow hard because he’s right. She did reach for me.
She didn’t flinch or panic, she just reached. Like she instinctively knew where solid ground was, and it happened to be my fur.
A shudder ripples down my spine before I can stop it.
Because if it had been one of the Eustace gang instead of me, she’d be dead. Or worse.
“She was in shock,”I mutter, clinging to the explanation even though it feels thin.“I smelled other dogs. They must be assistant dogs. She thought I was one of them.”
But something presses into me anyway. Hope, maybe? Like maybe she wasn’t reaching for a dog. Maybe, just maybe, she reached for me, because she knew she could trust me.
And I have no idea what the hell to do with that.
Froggy rolls his eyes.“Great. But most of the dogs are the size of golden retrievers. Not ten times the size.”
“You need to stop exaggerating. Ten times the size,”I huff. My fur bristles anyway, because sure, I’m big, but not that big.
“Guys, can you just stop fighting for a second?”There’s something in Buff’s tone that sounds almost like excitement.
“He’s a fucking idiot,”Froggy spits.
I ignore him and look at Buff.
