“Wasn’t a compliment.” She handed me a mop. “Kennel in the back.”
So I mopped. A Lycan King mopping a kennel floor on a Saturday morning because a five-foot-three woman in a sundress told him to. If the council could see me now.
Peter put me on dog-walking duty after. The pit bull mix was about ninety pounds of pure uncontrollable chaos. It dragged me across the parking lot before I got my footing, my shoes skidding on the asphalt while this animal sprinted after a bird that wasn’t even close. Andrea’s laugh hit me from behind, then the click of a phone camera.
“Delete that.”
“These are going in a frame.”
The dog yanked me back the other direction. More clicking, more laughing. I was going to destroy that phone later. I was absolutely not going to destroy that phone because hearing her laugh like that was worth any damn amount of humiliation.
Inside, a kitten from the new litter climbed my chest while I was sitting on the floor sorting donated blankets. Tiny needle claws digging into my shirt. I froze. Held it with both hands, stiff, barely touching, genuinely terrified of a creature that weighed less than my wallet.
“You look like you’re holding a bomb,” Andrea said, crouching in front of me.
“It’s very small.”
“It’s a kitten.”
“What if I hold it wrong?”
“Put it against your chest. It wants body heat.”
I pressed the kitten against my sternum. It purred. The vibration went through my shirt into my ribs and my whole body tensed because this damn thing weighed nothing, I could crush it without trying, and the thought made my stomach tight. I’d fought wolves twice my size, taken challenges from Alphas who wanted my throne, and none of that scared me as much as accidentally squeezing a kitten too hard.
“Breathe,” she said. “You’re turning red.”
The kitten kneaded my shirt and fell asleep. I sat on the floor for twenty minutes, not moving, barely breathing, because I was not going to be the person who woke it up.
Andrea took four photos, showed them to Mary and Peter, and all three of them laughed at me. I didn’t give a shit because Andrea was laughing and that was all that mattered.
While we restocked the food supply she talked. Not the way she used to talk to Fin on the porch, all rambling and uncensored. This was quieter. She was choosing what to share.
“My mom was a vet,” she said, stacking cans on the shelf. “Small clinic in Whitebrook. Our house always had animals. Dogs, cats, a rabbit once. A goose that followed her home from a lake.”
“A goose.”
“Gerald. Horrible. Bit everyone except my mom. Lived in our backyard for three months.”
She smiled, but softer than her usual smile. “I was going to follow her into vet school. Had the grades, had the plan. But after she and my dad died I needed money fast. Grandma was getting older, vet school is expensive, and somebody had to step up.”
She put the last can on the shelf and stood back. “I don’t regret it. I’m good at what I do. But sometimes I come here and I think about what it would’ve been like.”
She was looking at the rows of cans but her eyes were somewhere else entirely. I watched her face, didn’t say a word. Filed it deep.
That night at her house, she was on the couch with the highland romance open on her knee, legs tucked under her. I sat beside her with my arm along the back of the couch, not touching her shoulders but close enough that she could lean into me whenever she wanted. She usually did by the second chapter.
She read aloud in that terrible Scottish accent, doing all the voices, pausing every few pages to editorialize.
“He’s being an idiot again. Just tell her. Why are fictional men so emotionally constipated?” She looked at me sideways. “Don’t answer that.”
I listened. My wolf settled deep in my chest, quieter than it had been in years.
She read for an hour, her voice getting slower, the pauses between sentences stretching, and her head dropped against my shoulder. The book slipped from her fingers. I caught it before it hit the floor, set it on the coffee table, pulled the blanket off the back of the couch and draped it over her.
She mumbled and pressed her face into my neck, her hand curling against my chest. I sat very still with her warmth against me. All those nights I’d lain beside this couch as a dog, listening to this same voice, unable to touch her, unable to tell her who I was or what she meant to me. And now she was here, choosing this, choosing me, her fingers curled against my shirt and her breathing going slow.
It should have felt like relief, and it did, mostly. But underneath was a fear I couldn’t shake, cold and sharp, because I’d never had anything this good and I knew from experience that anything this good could be taken.
