Leo's jaw tightens.
"That's not a hundred," he says.
"It's not zero either." I press my forehead to my knees. "And the claw marks were clean. One swipe. Controlled. Not frenzied. Whatever did it knew what it was doing."
He pushes off the door. Crosses the room. Doesn't sit next to me. Doesn't give me space or distance or the polite buffer everyone else in this facility maintains.
He climbs onto the bed, hooks his arm around my waist, and pulls me into him.
I go rigid for a second — instinct, the body's first response to being grabbed. But his arms are already around me, both of them, and his chest is against my back and his face is in my hair and the smell of him hits me like a door opening. Warm skin. Pine soap. Something underneath that's purely wolf — musky, sharp, alive. His scent wraps around me the way his arms do and my body does something it hasn't done since I got here.
It lets go.
Not all the way. Not completely. But the coiled, braced, ready-for-impact tension I've been carrying in my shoulders and my jaw and my spine — it softens. Just enough. Because his body is warm and solid and pressed against mine and every point of contact is saying the same thing: I'm here. I've got you. You can put it down for a minute.
I didn't know I needed this. I didn't know my body was waiting for exactly this — to be held by someone who smells like mate and safety and who isn't asking me to explain or perform or hold myself together.
"Talk," he says into my hair. Not a question. A permission.
"Gray told me to stay away," I say. My voice comes out smaller than I want it to. His arms tighten. "Stood in front of me and said he's choosing not to do this." I laugh. It sounds wrong — thin, brittle. "So that's my day. Sixty-to-seventy-percent chance I'm a monster, I'm turning into something I can't control, and one of the people my body chose would rather crush the bond than be near me."
"Gray's an idiot."
"Gray's terrified."
"Those aren't mutually exclusive."
I look at him. His face is close. The sharp jaw. The dark eyes with something amber behind them now, visible in low light. The mouth that doesn't smirk anymore — or does, but differently, with the wolf in it.
"Are you scared?" I ask.
He's quiet for a beat. Two.
"Yeah," he says. "I'm scared."
"Of what?"
"Of this. Of you. Of the fact that my body shifted into a wolf because you touched me and instead of running the other direction I keep showing up at your door in the middle of the night." His voice is low. Honest in a way that the old Leo never would have allowed. "I'm scared that the Panel is going to separate us. I'm scared that whatever happened in that basement is going to follow you into every room you walk into. And I'm scared of how much I —"
He stops.
"How much you what?"
He looks at me. The amber warm. Present.
"How much I need you," he says. "Not the bond. Not the pull. You. The girl who calls me wolf boy and eats terrible cafeteria food without complaining and looks at a man in chains like he's the most beautiful thing she's ever seen. That's what scares me. The bond I can blame on biology. The rest is just me."
My hand finds his where they are wrapped around me.
His fingers lace through mine. Tight. Warm.
"If they smell weakness, you're done," he says. Quiet. "The Panel. The Board. Whoever's coming. They're looking for reasons to classify you as a threat. If you walk in there scared and uncertain, they'll use it."
"I know."
"So whatever this is — whatever you feel right now — feel it here. Feel it with me. And when you walk into that room, you show them nothing."
"You sound like you've done this before."
