I leaned into him. Let my head rest against the thick fur of his shoulder. Closed my eyes.
His heartbeat was slow and steady. A rhythm that had nothing to do with Twilson or rumors or the impossible tangle of bonds in my chest. Just this. Just life, persisting. A man who had been lost for years, still breathing. Still here.
The tension in my shoulders started to ease.
"I don't know what I'm doing," I admitted, barely above a whisper. "Everyone's watching me. Expecting me to have answers. And I don't. I'm just... making it up as I go."
North's head turned. His nose brushed my hair, inhaling. A soft sound rumbled in his chest — not quite a whine, not quite a growl. Something in between.
His heartbeat kept its steady rhythm. Thump. Thump. Thump.
I matched my breathing to it. In and out. In and out.
The world outside this room was complicated. Dangerous. Full of people who wanted things I didn't know how to give and threats I didn't know how to fight.
But here, there was just this.
His warmth. His heartbeat. The bond humming quietly between us, asking nothing, offering everything.
I closed my eyes.
And somewhere between one breath and the next, I fell asleep.
Chapter four
Iwoke to warmth.
That was the first thing I noticed — heat pressed along my side, my back, wrapped around me in a way that felt different from the night before. North's fur had been warm, but this was something else. Skin-warm. Body-warm. The kind of heat that only came from—
My eyes flew open.
The room was pale with early morning light, the sun not yet risen but the sky already shifting from black to gray. I was lying on the floor beside North's bed, exactly where I'd fallen asleep.
But I wasn't lying against a wolf.
I was tangled with a man.
Naked. Bearded. His arm draped across my waist, his face pressed into my hair, his legs intertwined with mine in a waythat suggested we'd shifted closer in our sleep without either of us knowing.
My heart stopped.
Then started again, too fast, pounding against my ribs.
North.
He'd shifted. Sometime in the night, while we both slept, the wolf had let go and the man had emerged. I could feel the difference through the bond — not the steady hum of the animal, but something sharper. More fractured. Human consciousness struggling to hold itself together.
I didn't move. Didn't breathe.
His body was rigid against mine. Not the loose sprawl of sleep — the frozen tension of someone who was very much awake and very much terrified.
"North?" I whispered.
A sound escaped him. Not a word. Something broken and desperate and human in a way that made my chest ache.
I shifted slowly, carefully, turning in his arms so I could see his face.
He was beautiful.
