I followed her up the stairs.Watched her move through my bedroom, her bare feet silent on the hardwood, until she reached the nightstand where the small bronze form sat half-hidden by a lamp and a stack of books I had been meaning to read for years.
She didn’t pick it up.Just looked at it for a long moment, taking in the rough edges, the unfinished lines, the places where my mother’s hands had shaped the metal but never completed the work.It was barely five inches tall.Abstract enough that most people wouldn’t recognize what it was meant to be.But I knew.I had always known.
“What was it going to be?”she asked.
“A wolf.”
Her eyes met mine.I saw the question forming, the pieces clicking together in her mind.The scars that weren’t made by human hands.The animal I had mentioned.The wolf sculpture my mother had been creating in secret, for a son she would never see grow up.
“You know,” I said, “that there are things about me I haven’t told you.”
“I know.”
“Things that might…” I stopped.Started again.“Things that would change how you see me.”
She was quiet for a moment.Then she reached out and traced the edge of the sculpture with one careful finger, the same gentleness she had shown my scars the night before.
“When you’re ready,” she said.“You can tell me when you’re ready.”
My wolf strained against my ribs.Tell her now.She’ll understand.She touched our scars and stayed.She’ll touch our fur and stay too.
But I couldn’t.Not yet.Not with Viktor’s warning fresh in my mind and the Pakhan’s eyes on us and a killer still loose in her hotel.There were too many ways for this to go wrong.Too many dangers circling, waiting for me to show weakness.
“I have to get to the hotel,” Lena said.“Jessica’s covering the front desk, but there’s a meeting with the summer events coordinator this afternoon.”
“I’ll have Parsons drive you.”
She nodded, but she didn’t move toward the door.Instead, she stepped closer to me, close enough that I could feel the warmth of her body through the thin cotton of my shirt.Close enough that her scent filled my lungs with every breath.
“Last night,” she said.“What you told me.About the punishment.”
I tensed.Waited.
“I don’t know what we are.”Her voice was steady, but I could hear her heart racing.Could smell the uncertainty and the hope tangled together in her scent.“I don’t know what any of this means.But I know I’m not running.”
She pressed her forehead against my shoulder, the same gesture she had made in the darkness after I told her about my scars.The same gesture that had undone me completely.
“I’m not running, Raphael.”
My arms came up around her without conscious thought.I buried my face in her hair and breathed her in, that familiar sweetness that was mine, and let myself believe, just for a moment, that this could last.That I could have this.That the hope wasn’t dangerous, that it was earned.
She pulled away before I was ready.Then she gathered her things from the bedroom floor, and headed to her room.
I sat on the edge of the bed and listened to her footsteps making her way downstairs, to her voice mixing with Alice’s in the kitchen.Heard Alice’s warm laughter, Lena’s quieter response.The sound of two women who had found something to like in each other, bonding over tea and shared concern for a man who didn’t deserve either of them.
The hope was dangerous.I knew that.I had learned that lesson in blood and loss and fifteen years of exile.
But as Lena’s footsteps faded down the hallway, as I heard the front door open and close behind her, I couldn’t make myself care about the danger.
I let myself imagine a future.
It terrified me more than anything else ever had.And I wanted it anyway.
My wolf settled against my ribs, content in a way I hadn’t felt in years.She’ll come back,he insisted.She always comes back now.And soon, she’ll stay forever.
I touched the rough edge of my mother’s unfinished wolf and didn’t argue with him.
17
