And when they finally stepped out into the night air together, the city bright around them and the sidewalks still alive with movement, Mac found himself thinking that for the first time since leaving Iraq he no longer felt like he was passing through someone else’s life.
This one, complicated as it might become, felt like his.
Chapter 17 - Mac
The days that followed unfolded without hurry.
The week in the city felt like it belonged to them.
Not in any official sense. Leave still had limits and obligations still waited on the other side of the ocean, but the days settled into a rhythm that felt briefly like a life instead of an interruption.
They walked more than either of them expected, sometimes with a destination and sometimes without one, Mac learning the streets by repetition while Melvin moved through them with the quiet familiarity of someone who had grown up there.
Mac found himself mapping the city the way he mapped any unfamiliar terrain, quietly building a sense of its streets and spaces. After the first couple of days he noticed he wasn’t thinking about exits the way he usually did.
His attention drifted instead to the simple fact of Melvin beside him, moving through the crowds with an ease that made the city feel less overwhelming than it might have otherwise.
Some afternoons they found quiet diners tucked into side streets where nobody paid them much attention, the kind of places where the coffee stayed hot and the waitstaff let you linger as long as you wanted. Other days they walked the length of Central Park, the panther and the wolf restless beneath the surface but calm enough to accept pavement instead of earth.
They visited Reynolds more than once.
The Council compound became less mysterious with familiarity, though Mac never lost the sense that most of what existed there lay beyond what he was allowed to see. Reynolds met them each time with the steadiness that had begun to define him, the uncertainty of those first days replaced by a quiet confidence that seemed to grow with each visit.
They watched Reynolds train, sometimes offering guidance and sometimes simply standing back while he worked through the exercises the Council had set for him. The striped hyena form came easier with each attempt, the transitions smoother, the control steadier. Whatever had once threatened to overwhelm him had settled into something that looked increasingly natural.
Once, after a longer session, the three of them sat together in one of the smaller dining areas near the training wing, paper trays pushed aside while they talked about things that had nothing to do with training at all. Places they had grown up. The strange paths that had brought them across the Veil. The lives they might have lived if things had gone differently.
As the week went on the conversations shifted into something easier. Reynolds stopped asking what things meant and started talking instead about what he was beginning to notice, the way instinct came faster now, the way the hyena form felt less like something he stepped into and more like something that waited just beneath the surface.
Mac listened the way he always did, steady and practical, offering advice when it was needed and leaving silence when it wasn’t. Melvin filled in the rest without thinking about it.
It surprised Mac how natural that began to feel.
Those afternoons ended the same way each time, Reynolds staying behind when Mac and Melvin left, the Council facility closing around him again while the city waited above.
It felt less like leaving a soldier behind than it had at first.
More like trusting him to stand on his own ground.
Evenings belonged to quieter things.
Sometimes they talked for hours without noticing the time, about nothing, about everything, about what came next and what might not. The conversations wandered the way long conversations sometimes did, circling subjects before settling on something that mattered more than either of them expected.
One evening they sat overlooking the East River, the city lights stretching across the water in broken reflections that shifted with every passing wake. The air carried the cool edge of early evening, neither warm nor cold, the kind of balance that made it easy to stay where you were without thinking about time.
“You ever think about what comes after all this?” Melvin asked.
Mac didn’t answer right away. He watched the river instead, the slow movement of barges and ferries cutting dark paths through the light.
“I used to tell myself it didn’t matter,” he said finally. “That the job was all I needed. Made things simpler if I believed that.”
Melvin didn’t push him. He just waited.
Mac leaned back and let out a slow breath.
“Out there everything’s clear,” he said. “You know what the mission is. You know what people need from you. Doesn’t leave much room for anything else.”
“And now?”
