I didn’t ask what he was thinking. I already knew. The smug furball had probably been hoping for something like this for days. I was grateful my wolf and the squirrel couldn’t communicate, or Victoria and I would be in serious trouble.
I stood with my hand on the latch, weighing options.
I could climb over the side of the balcony. Scale down the tree trunk and enter through one of the lower openings. I could call to my staff with a howl. I could break the latch with one good kick.
None of them felt dignified, so I turned around.
Victoria had taken a seat on the cushioned bench, her hands folded in her lap. She studied the forest as if being locked ona balcony by a squirrel was a reasonable turn of events she’d incorporated into her evening.
I found this attractive, which was a problem I didn’t have time to examine.
My wolf had gone quiet in that particular way that meant he was watching and enjoying himself and had no intention of helping.
I moved to the railing and leaned my hip against it, arms crossed on my chest, facing the forest. I wasn’t pouting. I was simply not ready to sit down yet.
Victoria shifted on the bench, and I heard the fabric of her dress rustle, her soft breathing.
I’d always been aware of her every movement and sound. I’d told myself in the beginning it was instinct or territory-sense. An alertness around something unfamiliar.
I’d stopped telling myself that not long after the wedding.
The bond hummed low and content between us, the way it did when we were close. I’d learned to stop fighting that particular sensation as well. It cost too much energy and won me nothing.
“He really is very good at this,” Victoria said in a soft voice.
Turning, I sat, keeping a reasonable distance between us. An appropriate distance for two people who were married and had kissed once and were now locked on a balcony by a scheming rodent.
Better,my wolf said.
I ignored him.
Silence settled over us, though it wasn’t uncomfortable. That was the thing that got me. Silence with Victoria had stopped being something I filled with growling or work or excuses to leave. It had become something I sat inside without feeling the need to fix it.
I didn’t know when that had happened. Maybe by day two.
The forest spread out below us, darkening as the last light faded. Distant howls echoed through the trees. My pack, calling to each other in the night.
“What did it feel like?” I asked.
The words came out before I’d decided to speak them, drawn out of me by the dark and the distance from everything that made honesty feel less dangerous.
Victoria turned to look at me. “What in particular?”
“The first time you made something in your laboratory that actually worked. What was that moment like?”
I didn’t fully understand why I’d asked. My wolf did, but my wolf had been untrustworthy since I met my wife.
She was quiet for a moment, her head tilting in a way that meant she was thinking through how to answer.
“I was twelve,” she said. “I’d been trying to synthesize a healing compound for weeks. Everything kept exploding or turning colors it shouldn’t or just sitting there doing nothing.” Her hands lifted, arranging invisible components in the air between us. “Then one morning, I mixed the elements in a different order, and it worked. Just like that. The compound stabilized and the color changed to exactly what it was supposed to be.”
She paused, blinking slowly.
“I ran to show my grandmother. I was shaking so hard I nearly dropped the vial. Elizabeth looked at it and said, “Yes, that’s right, like she’d always known it was coming.” A small smile crossed her face. “It felt like discovering I’d been speaking a language incorrectly my whole life and finally getting the pronunciation right.”
I’d noticed she watched her hands move when she talked about things she loved. She didn’t appear to notice she did this. Small gestures, precise and careful, like she was still arranging data.
My father had spoken about finding a mate the same way Victoria spoke about her laboratory. “You’ll know,” he’d said, “because you’ll want to hear everything they say, even the parts that don’t make sense.”
