"Pack run," I say.
He looks at the moon through the corridor window. Then at me.
"Took you long enough," he says.
***
The night is cold and clear and the moon is enormous.
I shift first. The wolf takes me clean and fast and the night opens — scent and sound and information in every direction, six bonds warm and pulling in the dark. Dalton shifts beside me. Then Gray. Then Leo, who takes three strides and immediately surges ahead.
Jake goes after him. Jim goes after Jake.
RJ shifts last. Massive and dark, the biggest wolf here by a margin that matters. He rolls his shoulders once, looks at me, and I don't wait — I run.
He runs with me.
The forest opens up and the pack spreads through it. Leo is ahead pushing hard. Jake catches him and they race through a gap in the trees, shoulders colliding, neither conceding. Jim ghosts between them and pulls ahead of both and Leo's outrage carries fifty feet back without a sound.
Gray runs beside me steady and certain.
RJ peels wide — circles out, comes back in — and then deliberately cuts across Leo's line, shouldering him off course mid-stride. Leo stumbles. Recovers. Turns to look and RJ is already gone, back beside me, shoulder brushing mine like nothing happened.
I feel it pull warm between us. RJ doing something for no reason except that he wanted to.
Leo finds the frozen stream and slides across it because of course he does and Jake skids into him and they go down in a tangle of limbs. Jim sits on the bank and watches with satisfaction. RJ stops beside me and we watch Leo attempt to re-establish dignity on a frozen stream.
RJ bumps my shoulder and runs.
I chase after him.
***
The cabin is at the far edge of a clearing — dark windows, the cold of a space nobody has used in a long time. Dalton shifts back and gets the door open and we push in after him, shifting back one by one in the dark.
Someone finds a kerosene lamp.
Leo finds it, which means it's no longer a quiet discovery.
"Found a lamp," Leo says.
"We can see that," Gray says.
"Just letting you know, I found it."
Dalton gets the fire going fast. The cabin is one room — wide wooden floor, heat coming up quickly, lamplight catching everyone still bright-eyed from the run. RJ is near the door, taking the room in. Not doing the circuit. Not checking exits. Just standing in a room full of his pack, adjusting to what that feels like.
He catches me watching.
I don't look away.
He crosses the room and puts his hand on my jaw and tilts my face up and looks at me — checking I'm still real, still here. His thumb moves once along my cheekbone. His grip steadies. He doesn't check the room again.
Then he steps back and lets Leo in.
***
Leo's hands find my face and his mouth finds mine — hungry, reckless, no patience for buildup, just the full force of him rightnow. He backs me up and I go, his hands already working at my clothes. Gray comes in behind me, mouth at the back of my neck, unhurried the way Gray is always unhurried, and the contrast between them is immediate and deliberate and doing things to me I won't recover from quickly. I turn my head and Gray tips my face toward him and kisses me slow, eye contact the whole way through.
