Back at her house, she sets everything up, narrating each step.
“Bowl here. Water there. Maybe we’ll get you a raised feeder. I heard it’s good for big dogs. You’re so big. Wow. I still can’t believe how big you are.”
I resist the urge to flex while she places the bowl down. “Okay,” she whispers. “Eat.”
Eat?
Say no more.
I start to devour every ounce of meat like a creature possessed.
She laughs in delight. “You were hungry.”
Now that’s the understatement of the century. She sets my “bed” up in the living room near her chair. If she knew I often spent my life lying on wet soil or sharp twigs, she would not have bothered. The tiled floor is softer than most places I’ve slept on. It’s certainly warmer.
The guys have a camp set up for operation-let’s-not-get-killed. I feel a little guilty about all of this when they’re sleeping out in the woods while they work on getting the IDs, but I am acting like a dog, so there’s that.
When she’s done setting up a basket of dog toys—toys I once thought I wouldn’t be caught dead touching, but now feel like I should play with as penance for my sins—she sits cross-legged on the floor like it’s the most natural thing in the world, her back against the cupboard, her cane resting beside her thigh, while I inhale food like someone’s about to steal it. And she just… talks.
Not nervously. Not filling silence. Just talking. To me.
“I used to believe my job was everything. That work was everything, you know?” she murmurs.
She strokes my fur absently, like she’s touching me from somewhere far away. The warmth of her hand sinks into my skin, and something in my chest tightens painfully.
“But when I had the accident, my bosses were more concerned about what they were going to do next than how I was doing, and I realized that all the time I spent away from Meemaw, and all the friends I lost because they stopped trying to make plans with me because I kept saying ‘no’ to things, was for nothing.” Her laugh is small and brittle. “Like they say, if you want loyalty, get a dog.”
She keeps talking, her hand in my fur like it’s the only anchor she has left. “Meemaw says I shouldn’t give a shit, that karma will come for them, but it doesn’t change anything, you know? I sacrificed more than I should’ve for them, and they didn’t even care.”
I know what she means. More than she could ever guess. The unfairness of fate. The price of surviving something you never asked for. My claws dig lightly into the floor as she continues.
“Some kid in a rock band threw a cup out of a car window. You wouldn’t have believed it if you saw it with your own eyes,but his littering caused a dire chain of events. That cup hit a guy on a motorbike on his visor. He swerved and hit a car, that car clipped another car, and it was all just metal on metal in a giant pileup.” Her breath cracks, just once. “His daddy made his sins go away, but they’ll never go away. Because nothing will give me my sight back. Nothing will give me another sunrise. Will show me Meemaw’s smile.” Her hand falters in my fur, curling gently. “Or will allow me to see you.”
My heart stops. Actually stops. Then slams back to life so hard my ribs ache. She doesn’t know what she’s saying. She doesn’t know what I am.
But the way she says it—soft, honest, like she’s admitting a secret—hits something deep and ancient inside me.
“He got off lightly,” she whispers, and I wonder what she means but it’s none of my business.
My muscles surge with the urge to press against her, to shove my head into her chest, to take the weight out of her voice with promises.
Instead, I stay still, listening and holding the moment for her the way she trusts me to. Because her pain, her truth, her vulnerability is not something to take lightly. It’s something to honor.
And I don’t know if I’m worthy.
She’s quiet for a long while, and I think she’s done talking, but then she continues, her voice a melody that fills the kitchen.
She tells me about her morning before I arrived. About her childhood and the grandmother who raised her—Meemaw, who sounds like she could fight God and win. She tells me about her time in the hospital, and how she had to learn to pour coffee again. She tells me about her fears, her hopes, the dreams she keeps tucked in her chest. Things most humans don’t say out loud. Things people guard with everything they have, yet she tells me without hesitation. She talks to me like I’m someonewho matters, someone she trusts. And I don’t know what to do with that. Because the only reason she’s spilling her secrets is because she thinks I’m a dog.
But still, it reaches something in me I didn’t know was still alive. Something old and starved. Something that’s been clawing at the inside of my chest for years. Wolves get loyalty. Wolves get pack. Wolves get instinct. But we didn’t get trust.
We’ve never been trusted by outsiders. So a stranger trusting me? That’s new.
Dangerously new.
And God, it does things to a man, even one pretending to be a dog. Even one who should know better.
When I’m done eating, I drop heavily onto the floor beside her, full and warm and so damn content that my wolf purrs.
