I stop at her door. I raise my hand to knock.
It opens before my knuckles touch the wood.
Chapter 20
First Surrender
Phoebe
He’s standingin my hallway, and the shaking has stopped again. Not just the tremor in my hands. Everything. The buzzing under my skin, the sensory overload, the constant low-grade fever that’s had me cycling between sweating and shivering for three days. All of it goes quiet the moment he steps through the door, like a frequency being tuned to the right station after days of static. My body recognises him before I let myself do the same.
I want to be angry about that. I was angry about it for three days, sitting in this cottage with my body punishing me for creating distance from the thing it wants. But standing here, looking at him, feeling thewarmth spread through me like the first sip of something strong, the anger doesn’t have anywhere to land.
“You look terrible,” I say.
“So do you.” He almost smiles. “We match.”
He does look terrible. Dark circles under his eyes, jaw shadowed with stubble he hasn’t bothered to shave, a tension in his shoulders that suggests he hasn’t slept any more than I have. His hands are at his sides, fingers slightly curled, and I recognise the restraint in them because I saw it the night he told me the truth. He’s holding himself back. Waiting for me to set the terms.
“I have questions,” I say.
“I know.”
“A lot of questions.”
“I’d expect nothing less.”
We move to the kitchen because the kitchen is safe, the kitchen is where we’ve had tea and conversation and the comfortable, bounded interactions that existed before he turned into a wolf on my carpet. I fill the kettle. He sits at the table. Normal things. Manageable things.
“The bond,” I say, my back to him as I wait for the water to boil. “You said it’s biological. Not magical.”
“As far as I understand it.”
“And my body is responding to it whether I want it to or not.”
“Yes.”
“And the symptoms, the senses, the temperature, the dreams, those are the bond activating something latent in me.”
“That’s what I believe. I don’t have certainty.”
I pour the water. My hands are steady for the first time in days. The kettle feels solid and real, and I concentrate on the mechanics of tea-making because looking at him while I ask the next question will undo me.
“Is there a way to stop it?”
The silence behind me is heavy.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t think so. Not once it’s started.”
I make the tea. Bring it to the table. While my hands are busy and my back is half-turned, I ask the question that’s been sitting at the bottom of the list. The one that makes my face burn.
“The mate bond. If we... If this goes where it seems to be going. Is there anything I should know? Physically. About you. About how your body works.”
The silence has a different quality this time. When I turn around, he’s looking at the table.
“Yes,” he says. “There is.”
I sit down, handing him his mug. I wrap my hands around my mug. Wait. I’m a vet. I’ve seen more unusual anatomy than most people can imagine.Whatever he’s about to say, I can handle it clinically. Even if the rest of me is on fire.
