Not what I expected.
“They shift. More gold when the wolf is close to the surface. Brown when he’s settled.”
“He’s settled now?”
“Very.”
She studies me with the clinical attention I’ve come to recognise as her processing mode. “How do you feel?” The vet, checking on her patient.
“Like something blew through my chest and what’s left is better than what was there before.”
The corner of her mouth twitches. “That’s not a clinical description.”
“I don’t do clinical. But I know what calm feels like. This is the first time I’ve felt it.”
Her hand is still on my ribs, fingers mapping the scars with light, deliberate pressure. “These are fully healed. The wounds I treated in the forest. I thought they’d take weeks.”
“Three days. The deep ones take longer.”
“That’s not possible.”
“And yet.”
She props herself up on one elbow. Her hair falls across her face. I reach up and tuck it behind her ear before I’ve thought about it—small and domestic—and it hits me like a fist because I’ve never done anything like it in my life.
“You’re doing it again,” she says.
“Doing what?”
“Looking at me like I’m the only thing in the room.”
“You are the only thing in the room.”
“The furniture would disagree.”
I laugh. The sound surprises me. It’s easy, unguarded. Phoebe’s eyes soften. I feel her response: pleasure, warmth, and underneath both, a thread of want that hasn’t gone away.
The pre-heat isn’t over. I can smell it on her, banked by last night but not extinguished. Her pupils dilate. Her scent shifts, that warm note deepening. Mywolf lifts his head with an attention that translates directly into a tightening low in my stomach.
“It’s still there,” she says. Not a question.
“The heat builds over several days. Last night would have taken the edge off, but?—”
“It didn’t take the edge off. If anything, it’s more focused. Before, it was everywhere. Now it’s...” She looks at me. “Now it’s specifically about you.”
“That’s the bond narrowing. Your body has identified what it needs.”
“What it needs.” A slight emphasis that could be irritation or amusement. “My body has a lot of opinions I didn’t sign off on.”
“Welcome to being a wolf.”
She almost smiles. Then the heat shifts in her expression, humour giving way to something darker. She puts her hand flat on my chest, over my heart. The bond sings.
“Last night was desperate,” she says. “I don’t regret it. But I want to know what it’s like when we’re not half out of our minds.”
“You want slow.”
“I want to feel all of it. Not just the urgency.”
