I stood at the window for a while longer, watching the campus. Watching the students who didn't know that five ferals werefighting for their lives in the Healing Center. Watching the grey sky threaten snow that hadn't fallen yet.
Thirty days.
Thirty days to prove that Stone could heal. That Cal's packmates could recover. That everything I'd risked was worth it.
Chapter fifteen
Cal's room was small.
Not a cell — not like Stone's. But not much bigger either. A bed he never used, a window that looked out over the back courtyard, a chair that had become mine during the long hours I'd spent here before the mountain. Before everything changed.
James was sprawled on the floor, textbook open in front of him, pretending to study. His shirt had ridden up slightly, exposing a strip of tan skin above his waistband. I kept catching myself looking at it. At him.
The bond between us hummed with low heat — constant, present, impossible to ignore. Even doing something as mundane as homework, I was aware of him. The breadth of his shoulders. The way his forearms flexed when he turned a page. The memory of those arms around me, holding me together when I was falling apart.
I forced my attention back to my book.
Cal was in the corner. Wolf form, as usual. Watching us with golden eyes that held more awareness than they used to.
"I don't understand how anyone is supposed to care about transformation narratives right now," James muttered, flipping a page with more force than necessary. "Tomlinson wants three thousand words on the 'liminal space between human and animal consciousness.' What does that even mean?"
"It means he wants you to think about what it's like to be both things at once," I said absently, highlighting a passage I'd already highlighted twice.
"I know what it's like. I live it." James closed the book. His eyes found mine, and the heat in the bond flared. "Writing about it feels redundant."
I swallowed. "Write about that, then. The redundancy. The way academic language tries to capture something that can only be experienced."
James stared at me. Something shifted in his expression — appreciation bleeding into want. "That's actually not terrible."
"I have moments."
A soft sound from the corner. Not quite a laugh — Cal couldn't laugh in wolf form — but something close. An exhale that carried amusement.
I looked up.
Cal was watching us with an expression I'd learned to read over the past weeks. Not the empty stare of the feral he'd been. Something warmer. More present.
More aware of what was simmering between James and me.
"You could join us," I said, my voice coming out rougher than I intended. "If you wanted."
His ears flicked. Uncertainty.
"No pressure. But the floor is big enough for three."
James shifted to make room, a wordless invitation.
Cal hesitated. I felt the conflict through our bond — the pull toward connection warring with the fear that being human still carried. He'd been wolf for so long. The other form felt foreign now. Dangerous.
But slowly, carefully, he stood.
The shift was quiet. No dramatic cracking of bones, no violent transformation. Just a ripple, like water settling, and then Cal was human. Kneeling on the floor where the wolf had been.
Naked.
My breath caught.
He was thin — too thin, ribs visible, hipbones sharp. But underneath the evidence of years of starvation, there was lean muscle. The body of someone who had survived through strength as much as luck. His hair fell into eyes that were the same gold they'd been in wolf form.
