Two weeks later, I woke with teeth in my neck.
Not literally.
Figuratively.
The dream left phantom pressure there anyway.
In it, I’d been standing in the clearing by the old stone. Moonlight. Wolf voices. The Pack in a wide circle, watching.
Theo—wolf and man both—had stepped forward. His eyes had glowed that eerie, silver-green, his wolf just under his skin. He’d cupped my face, thumbs warm, and whispered something I couldn’t quite catch.
Then he’d leaned in and *bitten* me.
Not hard enough to tear. Hard enough to mark.
Pleasure and pain had crashed together in a dizzying wave.
I’d woken with my heart rabbiting and my hand slapped to my neck, half-expecting to find blood.
There was nothing.
Just skin. Warm. Tingling.
“Fuck,” I muttered into my pillow.
Rufus snored and kicked me in the thigh.
Traitor.
The dreams had gotten worse—not worse, exactly. More…vivid—since the full moon.
They weren’t all about Theo.
Sometimes I ran alone through the trees, something huge and unseen pacing me. Sometimes I stood on the Overlook and watched the valley flood with water that glowed faintly, like moonlight turned liquid. Sometimes Margaret sat at my kitchen table, stirring honey into tea and drawing circles on napkins.
“You can’t serve everyone,” she’d say in those dreams. “Choose who you bleed for.”
“Great,” I told the empty room now. “Now I’m getting therapy from my dead grandmother in my sleep.”
The day didn’t give me time to dwell on it.
A cow in the south pasture had gone down overnight, according to the frantic voicemail from Joel. By the time I got there—Theo driving, because apparently me barreling down mountain roads at six a.m. was “unsafe”—the poor animal was bloated, eyes rolling.
“Bloat,” I said, sliding under the fence.
“Can you fix it?” Joel asked, desperation naked in his face. “We can’t afford to lose her. She’s…one of our best.”
“I can…try,” I said.
It was messy work.
Field surgery is never clean.
By the time we’d decompressed the rumen and swung the cow to a safer position, my arms ached and my clothes stank.
Theo held the flashlight the whole time, silent. His presence behind my shoulder was a steady weight.
When it was done—cow stabilized, Joel breathing again, my back screaming—I leaned against the fence post for a second, closing my eyes.
“You good?” Theo asked quietly.
“I need a shower,” I said. “And a nap. And maybe a new spine.”
He chuckled.
“We can do the first two,” he said. “Spine’s on backorder.”
He drove me back up to the cabin.
It had become a familiar dance—the two of us in the truck, the Ridge sliding by outside, our hands inches apart on the bench seat.
Sometimes we talked.
Sometimes we didn’t.
Today, silence felt…comfortable.
At the cabin, he killed the engine and didn’t move to get out.
I unbuckled slowly.
“The dreams are getting…worse,” I said, before I could talk myself out of it.
His hand tightened on the steering wheel.
“Worse how?” he asked. Neutral. Careful.
“More…intense,” I said. “About…you. The Pack. The stone. Marks.” Heat flooded my cheeks. “Biting.”
His breath stuttered.
“Ah,” he said.
“Is that…normal?” I asked, staring at my hands. “For…bond-adjacent situations?”
He was quiet a beat.
“Yeah,” he said finally. “Your…wolf, for lack of a better term—even if you don’t have one the way we do—feels the pull. Dreams are…how it…plays it out when your brain’s defenses are down.”
“I hate it,” I said. “I hate waking up feeling like I’ve…done something…intimate…with you when I know I haven’t.”
His jaw clenched.
“I hate that you feel like you’re…violated by your own mind,” he said quietly.
Guilt twisted in my gut.
“It’s not…you,” I said quickly. “I mean, it *is,* because it’s you in the dreams. But it’s not…you doing anything. It’s…me. My own…stupid subconscious.”
“Stupid, huh,” he muttered.
“You know what I mean,” I said. “It just…feels like the bond is…cheating. Using a back door. Getting me used to…things…before I’ve agreed to them.”
His hand flexed again.
“Then we…fight it,” he said. “We make sure the waking world stays…aligned with your choices. We don’t let the dreams…set the pace.”
“Easy for you to say,” I muttered. “You’re not the one waking up with phantom teeth in your neck.”
He made a strangled sound.
“Not the mental image I needed,” he said, voice a little strangled.
I glanced at him.
His eyes were dark. His jaw tight.
“Does it…do that…to you?” I asked, quieter. “The bond. Dreams. Stuff.”
He let out a slow breath.
“Yeah,” he said. “Has since the moment I smelled you.”
My pulse tripped.
“Care to…elaborate?” I asked, because I had terrible impulse control.
He shot me a look. “You sure?”
“No,” I admitted. “Yes. Maybe. Depends how…graphic we’re talking.”
He huffed a laugh.
“I’m not going to narrate my wet dreams for you,” he said. “I have some dignity.”
Heat flared across my face.
“But yeah,” he added more seriously. “Dreams. About you. In every way you can imagine. And some you probably can’t. Sometimes it’s…sex. Sometimes it’s…fighting. Sometimes it’s just…you in the clinic, and me in the doorway, and this…peace…that scares the shit out of me.”
“The last one doesn’t sound so bad,” I said.
“It’s the one that feels most like…more than magic,” he said quietly. “Like something that would’ve been there even without it.”
My throat tightened.
“This feels…unfair,” I said. “To both of us. Being…pushed…like this.”
“It is,” he agreed. “Doesn’t mean we roll over. We hold our own line. We make the magic work for us, not the other way around.”
“Is that…possible?” I asked.
“It has to be,” he said. “Or we’re all just…puppets on a string. I refuse to believe that’s all we are.”
I leaned my forehead briefly against the cool window.
“I want to hate you,” I said. “It would be so much easier if you were…an asshole. Or…indifferent. Or if you’d tried to drag me to the stone by now. I could…slam the door and go home.”
He was very, very still.
“I’m not going to apologize for not being an asshole,” he said dryly. “But I get it.”
“It’s like…” I groped for words. “Like the universe handed me this…magnificent, terrifying, glittering…knife. And said, ‘Here, this is yours, use it to…carve out a path for your people.’ And I just wanted a scalpel and a quiet exam room.”
He laughed, low.
“You’re something else,” he said. “Comparing my dick to a knife.”
“I did *not*—” I sputtered.
He grinned, quick and wicked.
The tension in the truck eased, just a little.
“Okay,” he said. “Here’s what we do.”
“Please tell me it involves sedatives,” I said.
“Eventually,” he said. “Not now. Now we…give your brain other…associations. Other memories. So when the dream tries to shove my teeth in your neck, your waking mind pushes back with…different images.”
“Like what?” I asked warily.
He leaned in.
Close.
Not kissing distance.
Whisper distance.
“Like me,” he murmured, voice a low rasp, “making you dinner without setting your kitchen on fire. Like you, elbows-deep in a cow, cussing me out for holding the flashlight wrong. Like us, sitting on this stupid porch in twenty years arguing about whose turn it is to fix the fucking generator.”
Emotion punched the air out of me.
“That’s very…domestic,” I managed.
“Terrifying, isn’t it,” he said softly.
“And…kinda hot,” I blurted, then slapped a hand over my mouth.
He froze.
Then, slowly, he smiled.
“That’s the bond talking,” I said quickly. “Ignore it.”
“That’s you talking,” he said. “I’m not ignoring that.”
He shifted, one hand coming up to rest, light and careful, against my neck.
Not on the spot from my dream.
Higher.
His thumb brushed just under my ear.
Goosebumps exploded there.
“If I ever…mark you,” he said quietly, eyes locked on mine, “it won’t be because the magic pushed. It’ll be because you asked me to. Because you looked me in the eye—like this—and said, ‘Theo, I want you to put your teeth right here.’”
Heat flashed through me so hard I almost whimpered.
I swallowed instead.
“Arrogant,” I rasped.
“Honest,” he said.
He let his hand linger one more heartbeat.
Then he pulled away.
“Go shower,” he said, voice a little rough. “You smell like cow.”
“You smell like…hubris,” I shot back, opening my door.
He laughed.
I stepped out onto the gravel, legs a little shaky.
As I climbed the porch steps, he called after me.
“Rory.”
I looked back.
He leaned an arm out the window, his eyes silver in the morning light.
“Wolf incoming,” he said. “Friday night. Patrol past your place. You’ll probably…hear us.”
I blinked.
Then I smiled, despite everything.
“Got it,” I said. “I’ll…leave a bowl of water out.”
He snorted.
As he drove away, dust kicking up behind his truck, the line on my neck where his thumb had rested still tingled.
No teeth.
No mark.
Not yet.
But the edge of it was there.
Waiting.
And for the first time, the idea didn’t entirely feel like a theft.
It felt like something I might…one day…choose.
On my terms.
Under my sky.
With the Ridge humming its approval under my feet.
***