If I keep thinking about it, I’m going to wake her up and take more. But she needs sleep. She needs safety. She needs someone who doesn’t lie to her every morning.
My chest aches. I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t want this—her—so much. It’s dangerous. For her. For me. For the pack. For everything we’ve spent years trying to outrun.
Yet here I am, memorizing the shape of her sleeping body as if imprinting her into my bones will somehow make this less impossible.
She murmurs something in her sleep, brow crinkling for half a second before smoothing out again. Instinct takes over, and I brush a strand of hair off her cheek. She sighs, a soft sound that hits straight through my ribs. My wolf leans forward.Stay, he urges.Protect. Keep.
But reality slams into me.
I don’t get to keep this. I don’t get to stay. I don’t get to be hers, not when she thinks I’m a dog, not when my whole life is a lie wrapped in fur and instinct and survival. The warmth in my chest curdles.
Because the truth is simple and awful. Last night was the best thing that’s ever happened to me. And that makes it the most dangerous.
And that’s why I quietly slip out of her bed like a thief in the night.
I stand in her dark hallway with my palms on the wall, breathing hard, trying to force myself back into my own body.
She tasted like warmth and kindness and everything I’ve been running from.
The guilt chokes me, nearly folds me in half from the inside out.
My wolf whispers, “go back to her”, but my conscience whispers, “you don’t deserve to”.
I decide not to shift as I bolt into the trees. The cold air slices against me, but it does nothing to quiet the ache. Her citrusy scent still clings to me, and every inhale burns.
By the time I reach the campfire, I’m shaking, but not from the run or the cold. From everything I realize I can’t have. But that small spark is there—the hope. Can I?
Buff and Froggy are waiting, the fire a dim glow against the dark pines.
Buff looks up first. “You look like you won the lottery and got hit by a truck at the same time.”
Froggy snorts. “Yeah. That’s what guilt looks like.”
I stiffen. “I didn’t?—”
“You did,” Froggy says flatly. “And we’re screwed.”
My stomach drops. “What?”
Froggy snatches a thick manila envelope and hurls it at me like it’s a live grenade. I catch it on instinct.
It’s heavy. Legal-paper heavy.
“Congratulations,” he says, bitterness dripping from every syllable. “You fell in love with someone who’s loaded.”
I’m stunned. “I’m not?—”
But the lie dies on my tongue as something cold and merciless unfurls in my chest. Awareness. Certainty. The truth I’ve been outrunning until this exact moment. My heart sinks like a stone. I am falling in love with her.
I flip the envelope over but refuse to open it and invade her privacy.
What does Froggy mean? My heart kicks hard against my ribs, a hot, sick surge of panic rising up my throat. He has to be mistaken. She lives simply.
A pulse of something fierce and choking lodges under my sternum.
My voice scrapes out rough. “Where did you get this?”
“Under her tablet,” Froggy says, not even pretending to look ashamed. “You know, the one she uses because she can’t fucking see? Yeah, I looked under it. Don’t worry, she didn’t notice. Apparently, she got a fat fucking settlement for her accident. I’m talking mega bucks.”
