Something rustled in the bushes to our left and I flinched, my hand tightening in his fur. He didn’t react, just kept walking, calm, unbothered, and I realized nothing in this forest was going to mess with us because the biggest predator here was the one I was holding onto. That was a hell of a feeling. Terrifying and safe at the same time, which pretty much summed up my entire relationship with this man.
“I bet you love this,” I said. “Big scary wolf, little helpless human clinging to your fur. This is your fantasy, isn’t it? The whole damsel-in-the-woods thing.”
He bumped his head against my hip, gentle this time, and I scratched behind his ears without thinking about it. It was muscle memory at this point, my hand finding the same spot behind his left ear that made his eyes close, the same spot I used to scratch on the porch when he was Fin and I was lonely and neither of us knew what this was going to become.
My shoe caught a root and I stumbled. His body was under me before I hit the ground, solid as a wall, and I grabbed two fistfuls of fur and hauled myself upright.
“Okay, I should have worn different shoes. I acknowledge this. Don’t look at me like that.”
He was absolutely looking at me like that. Wolves shouldn’t be able to look smug but this one had mastered it.
“Wipe that expression off your face. Can wolves even make expressions? You’re making an expression. Stop it.”
His tail wagged once. The bastard.
“You know what’s weird?” I said, once I had my footing back. “Nothing about this is weird to me anymore. A year ago I would have lost my fucking mind. Now I’m holding onto a wolf in a forest worrying about my shoes. That’s where my life is at.”
He bumped my hip with his shoulder, which nearly knocked me sideways again.
“Was that agreement or an attempt on my life?”
By the time we made it back to the estate, the sky had gone from blue to purple to black at the edges, stars coming out one at a time like someone was turning on lights. I grabbed a blanket from inside, spread it on the grass in the garden, and settled against his side. He was still in wolf form, his body a wall of fur and warmth against the cool night air. I leaned my head back against his shoulder, felt the rumble of his breathing through my whole body.
“You’re like a giant heated blanket,” I told him. “If this King thing doesn’t work out you’ve got a real future in furniture.”
He nosed the side of my head, warm breath in my hair, and I swatted him away laughing. “Gross, your nose is wet. Boundaries, Finneas.”
I opened the book.
“One more time,” I said. “For the original audience.”
I read aloud. The accent, the voices, the full performance. He huffed at the hero’s love declarations and I poked his side. “Don’t be a snob. This man is fighting for her. He’s doing his best.” Another huff. “Oh, you think you could do better? You communicated through grunts for two years. You have no room to judge fictional heroes.”
His tail thumped once on the grass. I took that as concession.
I read another chapter. The heroine was telling the hero she was scared of loving him because everyone she’d loved had left, and my voice got quieter as I read it. The words landed differently tonight, sitting in a garden with a wolf who was also a king who was also a man who’d lied to me and fought for me and carried me to bed when I fell asleep on his porch. The heroine was scared. I understood that. I’d been scared since the night I found out Fin was Finneas, since the peonies, since the first time he said my name like it was the only word he knew.
I stopped reading and put the book down on my chest, face up, the pages fluttering once in the breeze before settling.
“That’s enough for tonight,” I said.
The wolf shifted behind me, pressing closer. His big head came around and rested on my shoulder, heavy and warm. I put myhand on his muzzle and held it there. His fur was soft under my palm, his breath warm and even against my neck.
“I used to read to you on my porch,” I said, quieter. “It was my favorite part of the day because I felt less alone. Now I’m reading to you in your garden and I know who you are and it’s still my favorite part.” I scratched behind his ear. “For a wolf, you’re a pretty good reading buddy.”
His phone rang from inside the estate. I could hear it through the open garden doors, buzzing on the kitchen counter where he’d left it. The wolf’s ears swiveled toward the sound. His body tensed under my hand.
“Leave it,” I said.
He stayed for a second, pressed against me, ear tilted toward the buzzing. It stopped, then started again, persistent, and I felt his body tense with the decision before he made it.
The wolf pulled away from me and I felt the cold rush in where his body had been, sudden and sharp like stepping out of a warm house into winter. He trotted to the garden door, disappeared inside, and I heard the shift, the rustle of him pulling on clothes, then his voice on the phone, low and clipped. I couldn’t make out the words.
I sat in the garden alone with the book on my chest and the stars overhead and the cold spot against my back where he’d been. A cricket started up somewhere in the hedge, filling the quiet he’d left behind.
This was it. This was loving someone who had a whole other world I couldn’t follow him into. Phones that rang at night, callshe took in the other room, a pack and a council and a crown that would always pull him away. I could hear his voice through the door, distant but present. I couldn’t hear the words. I had to sit with that.
He came back five minutes later, human again, dressed, his jaw set tight in that way I’d learned meant the call hadn’t been good.
