“And with a grounding presence?”
“The symptoms ease. The cycle becomes predictable. The intensity is still there, but it’s directed rather than chaotic.”
I think about last night. About the night before. About the way the frantic, overwhelming need resolved into something focused and manageable the moment he was there, and how even now, sitting four feet away from him in my kitchen, my body is calmer and steadier than it’s been in weeks.
“So I’m going to go through that regularly,” I say.
“Yes.”
“And you’re the only thing that makes it bearable.”
“I wouldn’t put it quite like?—”
“You would. You’re just being diplomatic about it because you think I’ll find it oppressive.”
He sets two plates on the table and sits down across from me. “Do you find it oppressive?”
I consider the question honestly. A week ago, the answer would have been an emphatic yes. The idea that my body would periodically require the presence of a specific person to function properly would have offended every independent instinct I possess.
But a week ago, I didn’t know what the bond felt like from the inside. I didn’t know what it meant to feel another person’s heartbeat in your own chest, to sense their presence like a second pulse, to experience pleasure as a shared frequency rather than a solitary event. The bond isn’t a leash. It’s a circuit. A circuit requires two points of connection to work.
It occurs to me, sitting here with this thought, that I haven’t been angry about James in weeks. I haven’t thought about him at all. Not the way he listened with his eyes on his phone. Not the two years I spent shrinking to fit the space he left me. Somewhere between the wolf in the forest and the man in my kitchen, the anger burned itself out, and I didn’t noticeit going. What replaced it isn’t forgiveness, exactly. It’s irrelevance. James belongs to a version of my life that no longer applies, and the woman who tolerated him is someone I can barely recognise from here.
That’s not the bond’s doing. That’s mine.
“Ask me again in a month,” I say. “When I’ve had time to gather more data.”
He smiles. It’s the real one. The one that reaches his eyes, makes the gold flecks catch the light.
We eat dinner. We talk about bone density and mass conservation, and the caloric requirements of a transformation that violates thermodynamic principles. He answers what he can, admits what he can’t. I fill three pages of my notebook with questions that don’t have answers yet. Outside the kitchen window, the dark comes down. The stars come out. The village settles into its quiet evening rhythms.
It’s not the life I planned. It’s not the peace and quiet I came to Mistwood looking for.
It might be better.
Chapter 23
Pack Politics
Roan
My father is sittingon my porch when I get back from Phoebe’s.
It’s late. Past ten. The kind of hour when reasonable people are in bed, and unreasonable people are sitting in the dark on their son’s porch with the patience of a man who’s been waiting a long time and doesn’t mind waiting longer. He’s got a flask, which means he planned this. Chris Mistwood doesn’t carry a flask for spontaneous visits.
I see him from thirty metres away and consider turning around. The forest is right there. I could run the boundary, loop back in a few hours, and hope he gets cold and gives up. It’s a coward’s option, and Irecognise it as such, which is the only reason I keep walking.
“A bit late for a social call,” I say, stopping at the bottom of the steps.
“I’ve been calling you for three days. You haven’t answered.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“So I hear.” He pours something from the flask into the cap. Steam rises in the cold air. “Sit down, Roan.”
“I’m fine standing.”
“I know you are. Sit down anyway.”
