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After a while, she says, “You’re heavy.”

“I know.”

“You’re going to have to move.”

I lift myself so I’m hovering rather than pressed against her. “In a minute,” I say against her neck.

A pause. Then her arms, which should by any reasonable expectation be pushing me away, tighten slightly instead.

“In a minute,” she agrees.

I lift my head and look at her. The firelight is catching the edges of her face, and her hair is a mess, and she looks… beautiful.

I brush her hair back from her face. She lets me.

Eventually, I settle beside her in the grass, and she doesn't move away, which is the most Mia thing she could have done—not reaching for closeness, not retreating from it. Just staying.

Echo appears from somewhere in the dark and sits on the rock above our heads and regards us both with his small dark eyes and the expression of a creature whose opinion has been entirely validated.

“Don’t,” Mia tells him.

He blinks. Looks at me.

“She’s right,” I tell him. “Not a word.”

He deposits a small shiny object on the rock—another button—and settles in with the satisfied air of a chaperone whose work here is done.

Mia exhales. Looks up at the canopy. The stars are visible through the branches, cold and distant.

“Nash,” she says.

“Yeah.”

“Don’t make this into something tonight.” Her voice is quiet. Not hard. In fact, she sounds almost pleading. With herself. With me. “Just let it be what it is. Okay?”

I look at her profile against the firelight. The line of her nose. The curve of her mouth.

“Okay,” I lie.

She exhales again.

And somewhere in the trees, an owl calls once and goes quiet, and the fire settles, and Mia Reyes lies in the grass beside me and doesn’t run, and I think that is the most she can give me tonight, and I think it is enough, and I think I am going to love her so completely that she runs out of reasons not to let me.

13

MIA

Nash is already up when I wake to soft sunlight streaming in through the canopy overhead. I can hear him at the fire behind me, moving around, probably cooking another rabbit. The smell of coffee reaches me, real coffee this time from wherever he produces things from inside that pack, and my wolf is disgracefully pleased about all of it. Not just the cooking and the coffee but everything that happened last night too. If I’m being honest, I’m pretty pleased about it too, though I’m not sure that’s the wisest feeling to have.

I lie in the grass and conduct a brief internal assessment with my wolf.

Last night happened. Yes.

It was amazing. Yes.

And now you’re going to… Figure it out. Later. When there’s more distance between me and this campsite that has somehow turned into a romantic getaway, and the way he said I’ve got you like it was some kind of marriage proposal.

I sit up. Find my pack. Grab it and head around the big tree to change. When I’m done, I take the Null from the inner pocket.