Because this is different.
This is Wolf, choosing to rest against me without question.
The feeling settles into my circulation, quiet and earned.I didn’t realize how starved I was for this simple thing, another human trusting me with their unconsciousness, their vulnerability.
I’ve never had a partner.No girlfriend.No boyfriend.Sex has always been a transaction, a source of income, leverage, or a role to play and discard.I know how to perform, and I know how to be a protector for Dove.I don’t know how to belong to someone, how to be asignificant other.
For the first time in my life, I don’t feel like a solitary structure braced against collapse.With Wolf, I feel aligned, bonded, and fiercely aware of how much it means that he’s at my side, breathing and safe.
So I stay awake, guarding his sleep the way I once guarded Dove’s.
Midway through the flight, Kodiak comes back without a word.He lowers himself beside the sofa, careful as a mountain settling, and studies Wolf where he snoozes against me.
The look on Kodiak’s face is pure love, vast and fathomless.The kind of love that survived things no one should.The journal graphically illustrated what they endured together.Years of hunger, cold, and abuse, with one another as their only constant.Seeing that history reflected in Kodiak’s eyes reshapes things in my chest.
Then his gaze lifts to me.
He scrutinizes my arm around Wolf, the way I’ve angled my body to shield him from the aisle, and the calm soaked into Wolf’s sleeping face.
After a long, assessing perusal that measures intent and outcome, he gives a single, almost imperceptible nod.
Approval.
“I’ve never seen him like this,” he whispers so softly it barely sounds like him.“Not once.Never saw peace on him.Never saw hope.Nothing even close to happy.Not until you and Dove stormed into his life.”
Then he straightens, all bulk and gravity returning, and lumbers toward the front without looking back.
I relax into the couch, breathing in time with Wolf, as the plane carries us north through the dark, toward debts still due, promises not yet made, and the single most important priority.Taking back our little bird.
The island greets us with damp air and lush darkness.The moment we arrive, Monty and Kodiak peel off, heading straight to bed.They earned it.
Wolf and I should do the same.But we can’t.Sleep is a luxury for men who have their woman in bed beside them.
To my disappointment, the Russians stay.Crashing in the main house means proximity, eyes and ears everywhere, and I don’t have the privacy I need to work.
I’m set up in the guest house before the engine heat fades from my bones.Laptop open.Secondary rig humming.Satellite uplink clean.Air-gapped backup live.I test every line, every handshake, every packet on the network.
The Russians were good.Which means I assume compromise until proven otherwise.
My wrist throbs as I type, and my shoulder screams when I reach too far.I welcome the pain.It keeps me focused.
“Sit still.”Frankie flutters like a moth in scrubs, prodding at my arm.
“No.”I bare my teeth.
She already stuck Wolf with needles to send samples off to a lab to test for bloodborne disease transmission.Then she flushed his mouth, made him spit until his jaw hurt, and checked his gums and tongue for cuts.All necessary, given the amount of foreign blood he swallowed.
“This is why it’s not healing.”She catches my wrist mid-keystroke and clicks her tongue.“And that shoulder you’re pretending wasn’t dislocated…”
“It’s relocated.”
“By whom?You?With a vengeance?”
I go back to the screen.She doesn’t let go.
Murmurs drift from the couch behind me, Leonid’s growly voice, and Wolf’s louder, faster timbre, threading humor through horror as he catches Leonid up on the last few days.
I don’t turn, but I hear what Wolf isn’t saying.Where’s Dove?Who has her?How are we getting her back?
