Mira’s jaw tightened.
She turned back toward the path and kept walking, her hand on her stomach, and the warmth between us cooled by a fraction.
Toward the kingdom that kept finding new ways to tell her she wasn’t enough.
I fell into step beside her, bleeding and certain that the next few days were about to get significantly more complicated.
54
— • —
Percival
Running helped.
The thinking was still a disaster, a tangle of names and dates and a locket that used to be a mystery and was now an answer I hadn’t been ready for.
But the running, the four-legged, ears-back, muscle-burning sprint through the tree line at a pace that turned the forest into a blur of green and brown and cold morning breeze, that helped.
My wolf had taken the news better than the man. Animals don’t overthink grief. I’d been running the perimeter since before dawn, looping the safe zone Solomon had mapped, and every circuit burned off a fraction of the weight that had been sitting on my chest since Farmon said my parents’ names.
My legs pumped harder. The forest floor absorbed the impact of my paws and I let the rhythm replace the thoughts.
Run. Breathe. Turn. Run again.
On the fourth loop, I caught her scent.
Mira was sitting on a fallen log near the stream, wrapped in one of Solomon’s jackets, her tablet balanced on her knees. She looked up when I broke through the tree line and her expression cycled through surprise, concern, and then a softness that made my wolf slow from a sprint to a trot without my permission.
“Hey,” she said.
I padded toward her. My wolf was massive, dark brown with hazel-gold eyes, and in this form the emotions simplified. No words to fumble, no conversations to navigate. Just the bond and the instinct and the woman who smelled more right than anything else in either world.
I stopped in front of her. She reached out and her fingers sank into the fur behind my ears.
Everything slowed.
Her touch was unhurried. Scratching gently, working through the dense coat at my neck, and the tension I’d been carrying for days began to unspool in a way that running hadn’t managed. My wolf leaned into her hand, and the sound that came from my throat was closer to a purr than any noise a wolf should make.
“There you are,” she murmured. “I’ve been waiting for you to come back.”
Definitely not from the run but from my silence.
I lowered my head and pressed my muzzle against her stomach.
The three heartbeats accelerated at the contact, a tiny chorus responding to their father’s presence, and the bond pulsed with a warmth that filled every hollow space the grief had carved.
Mira’s hand moved to the top of my head, stroking gently, and I curled around her, my body wrapping the log until my head rested against her belly and her fingers traced slow patterns through my fur.
“I know,” she whispered. “Lucian told me about your parents.”
My body stiffened for half a second. Then relaxed, because of course he had. And because there was no version of this where she didn’t find out, and no version where the finding out changed how her hand moved through my fur.
She leaned down and pressed her lips to my forehead. A kiss so tender it nearly undid the last of my composure.
“I’m sorry, Percy.”
They settled into me with a weight of acknowledgment. I stayed curled against her stomach and let the heartbeats fill the silence, and for the first time in days, the silence didn’t hurt.
