“She was remarkably patient.” I set down my cup. “What about your family? You mentioned your father died when you were younger.”
The humor drained from his face. He stared into his tea for a long moment.
“I was nineteen when he died during a border skirmish with a rival pack. He was trying to negotiate peace, and they killed him for it.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugged, but the tension in his shoulders told a different story. “It was a long time ago. Thirteen years.”
“That doesn’t make it hurt less.”
His eyes met mine, raw pain flickering through in them before he looked away. “No. It doesn’t.”
I waited, letting the silence stretch. Sometimes people needed space to decide whether to keep talking or let it go.
“My mother left us when I was seven,” he said, his voice carefully neutral. “Just shifted and ran off one day. She didn’t say where she was going or why. She didn’t even say goodbye. I don’t know if she’s alive or dead.”
The pain underneath his words made my throat close off tight. “You must have looked for her.”
“For years.” His jaw clenched. “Eventually I stopped. If she wanted to be found, she would’ve come back.”
I understood that particular kind of hurt, the one that came from being left behind by people who were supposed to stay. My parents hadn’t abandoned me the way his mother had, but they’d chosen their work over me often enough that I knew what it felt like to be an afterthought.
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
Understanding passed between us, the acknowledgment of shared wounds.
“You turned out alright,” he said. “Despite them.”
“So did you. despite her.”
His mouth curved but it was more a grimace than a smile. “That’s debatable.”
I picked up a piece of bread, tore it in half, and offered him part. He took it, our fingers touching in the exchange.
As we ate, I tried not to think too hard about how easy this felt, how much I enjoyed getting to know this side of my alpha wolf husband.
When he finally stood to leave, he paused beside my worktable, looking at my scattered samples and notes.
“You’re close to discovering something,” he said.
“I think so. I just don’t know what it will be yet.”
He nodded and left, taking his exhaustion and carefully controlled pain with him.
I stared at the wall, that warm feeling in my chest growing stronger.
Two days later and after dinner, instead of retreating to the bedroom alone to read, I lingered in the sitting area where Feral sat in his chair, an open journal in his lap. I felt twitchy, though I couldn’t name why.
I stepped out onto the balcony, needing air and space to think.
Feral joined me at the railing.
We stood in the dark, the forest spreading out below us. Distant howls echoed through the trees, his pack calling to each other in the night. The scale of his territory stretched in every direction, vast and wild and beautiful.
“I found something,” I said.
He turned his head toward me, waiting.
