Cal's trembling had stopped, but he hadn't let go of me. We were lying face to face on the cold floor, legs tangled, arms wrapped around each other like survivors of a shipwreck clinging to the same piece of driftwood.
I should have been uncomfortable. Should have been worried about staff arriving, about someone seeing us like this, about the thousand complications that came with holding a naked man who was barely holding onto his humanity.
I didn't care.
He needed this. I could feel it through the bond — the way my presence steadied him, the way each point of contact between us was an anchor keeping him tethered to his human form.
"I remember snow," he said eventually.
His voice was clearer now. Still rough, still painful, but stronger. Like the words were coming easier the more he used them.
"Snow?"
"Everywhere. Cold so deep it stopped hurting." His eyes were distant again, but not panicked this time. Just... far away. "I was running. We were all running."
"We?"
He went quiet. I felt something shift in the bond — a door opening, just a crack, onto something dark.
"There were others," he said. "Like me. Lost. Feral. But together."
My heart rate picked up. "Other ferals?"
"Pack." The word came out with weight. With meaning. "We were a pack. I don't remember how it started, or where we came from, but I remember... belonging. Having a place."
I thought about what Rae had said — that ferals rarely survived alone. That Cal's condition suggested he'd had something to hold onto during those years in the wilderness.
Not something. Someone. Multiple someones.
"What happened to them?" I asked carefully.
Cal's face contorted. Pain. Guilt. The door in the bond swung wider, and I caught a glimpse of what was behind it — grief so vast it made my eyes water.
"I left them."
The words came out broken. Barely a whisper.
"I left them and I never went back."
"Cal—"
"There was a storm. Or— no. Before that. Something happened. Hunters, maybe, or— I can't remember." His voice was shaking now, his body starting to tremble again. "We got separated. I was looking for help. For food. Something. And then I couldn't find my way back, and the cold—"
He broke off. His breathing went ragged.
"The cold got inside me," he continued, each word a struggle. "Inside my head. I stopped remembering why I was looking. Stopped remembering there was anything to look for. I just— I was just a wolf. Just hunger and cold and nothing else."
Tears were sliding down his face. He didn't seem to notice.
"And then you found me," he said. "You called me back. You—" His voice cracked. "But they're still out there. My pack. I left them and they're still—"
"Cal." I took his face in my hands. Made him look at me. "Breathe. Listen to me. You didn't abandon them. You got lost. There's a difference."
"They needed me."
"You needed to survive."
"I was supposed to protect them."
