*Kieran*
The cold bit deeper once I stepped away from the cabin.
Good. I needed the sting.
Pine needles crunched softly beneath my bare feet as I moved into the darkness beneath the trees. The blanket around my hips was a flimsy barrier against the October air, but the chill cleared the last lingering fuzziness from the shift. The world sharpened—every scent, every sound.
Smoke from the cabin fire. Sage’s scent, still threaded through the air like a new color in an old painting—coffee and cotton, sweat and a faint, clean tang I’d learned belonged to lab disinfectant.
Underneath it all, the wild things.
An elk herd two ridges over, their musky tang carried on the moving air. The sharp, coppery ghost of a rabbit killed hours ago. The heavier presence of my own people scattered through the forest—Rafe’s familiar, peppery scent heading south toward the human woman’s cabin, Mara’s cool river-stone presence near the dens, where the pups were finally settling down.
And there—under it all, like rot beneath fresh snow.
Them.
The foreign pack.
Too far away to taste clearly, but the echo of them had been riding the northern wind all week. The hair along the back of my neck rose.
“You going to stand out here and brood all night, or were you planning on putting on pants first?”
I didn’t startle. Rafe had never been able to sneak up on me, not even when he was fifteen and thought he could move like a ghost in the trees.
I didn’t turn either. “How’d she take it?”
“About as well as you’d expect someone to take ‘hey, surprise, monsters are real and you’re stuck with them now.’” He came to stand beside me, hands shoved in the pockets of his worn jacket, breath steaming faintly in the cold. “She has a mouth on her.”
“I noticed.”
“Smart, too.” He kicked at a rock with the toe of his boot. “Asking the right questions. Processing even while she’s losing her shit. I like her.”
“That’s not relevant.”
“It is if you’re counting on her not to do anything stupid,” Rafe said. “People who think tend to live longer.”
“Not always,” I said quietly.
We stood in silence for a moment, the forest breathing around us. An owl ghosted between the branches overhead, soundless and pale.
“She’s not wrong, you know,” Rafe said eventually. “About how this looks to her. We took her. We made a decision for her. You made a decision for her.”
“You think I should’ve killed her?” I asked without inflection.
He blew out a breath. “No.”
“Erased her memory and hoped Mara didn’t turn her into a vegetable?”
“No,” he said again, more sharply. “Fuck, Kieran, no.”
“Then what would you have done differently?”
He was quiet a moment, jaw working. “I might’ve…lied more.”
That pulled a humorless huff out of me. “You can lie to humans,” I said. “You’re good at it. I’m not.”
“You told her what we are.”
“Yes.”
“You said the word?”
“Not that word.” My mouth twisted. “She did.”
He snorted. “Of course she did.”
“She saw the shift,” I said. The memory of the way she’d watched—eyes wide, lips parted, utterly frozen—twisted something low in my gut. “Half-transformed. Every bone breaking. Every inch of skin tearing and knitting. That’s not the kind of thing you can tuck into a dark corner and hope it rots quietly.”
“You think she’s going to accept this?” Rafe asked.
“I think she’s going to fight it with everything she has,” I said. “And I think…she’s going to keep looking anyway.”
He shot me a sideways glance. “You like that.”
“It’s useful,” I said crisply.
“Useful,” he echoed, unimpressed. “Right.”
I ignored him. “What did you tell the Fish and Wildlife office?”
“Exactly what we said.” He shrugged. “She slipped. Hit her head. She’s coherent but resting. Weather’s iffy, so she’s pulling back from the tower for a few days.”
“Did they buy it?”
“They didn’t not buy it.” He smirked faintly. “Your lady has a reputation for being stubborn and antisocial, by the way. One of the guys on the radio called her a ‘lone wolf.’”
My mouth twitched despite myself. “Fitting.”
“Yeah, she didn’t sound thrilled when he said it.” His smirk faded. “I told them she’d radio tomorrow at eleven. You better have your story straight by then.”
“I would.” I tilted my head, listening. “Mara says the pups are settled.”
“You can hear her from here?”
“Not her words.” I tapped my chest, above my heart. “Her mood. Her…sense. It’s calmer now.”
“Good.” Rafe shifted his weight. “She’s not happy with you either, you know.”
“Mara is never happy with me.”
“Yeah, well, this time she has a point. You brought a human into the heart of our territory. Into your own cabin, no less.”
“What would you prefer I do?” I asked. “Tie her to a tree?”
He was silent for a long beat. “You like her,” he said eventually.
The accusation rubbed like sand under my skin. “I don’t know her,” I said. “I’m managing a problem.”
“Bullshit.”
I turned then, slowly, and met his gaze. “You questioning my judgment, Rafe?”
He held up his hands. “I’m questioning your…objectivity.”
“There is nothing—”
“You carried her,” he cut in. “You didn’t have to. Kellan and I were right there. But you shifted back, naked and bloody on the forest floor, and the first thing you did was scoop up some human scientist you’d never met and snarl at anyone who got too close.”
Heat flared behind my cheekbones. “I was the one who startled her. I was the one she saw. She’s my responsibility.”
“You’re Alpha,” he said. “Everything is your responsibility. That doesn’t mean you take all of it into your bed.”
“I put her in the cabin because it’s the most secure place,” I snapped. “Stone walls, single door, no windows at ground level. If the Northridge pack decides to push their luck again and they find out we’ve got a human witness, where do you think they’ll go first?”
Rafe’s face sobered. “You think they’ll come?”
“I think they’ve been circling like coyotes around a carcass all summer, looking for an excuse.” I growled low in my throat. “They smell blood now. Fear. Disruption.”
“Because of her,” he said.
“Because I slipped,” I corrected. “Because I got cocky and went too close to her tower. Because I let her watch me too long.”
“You’ve been watching her for weeks,” he pointed out. “You stayed out of sight every other time.”
“Until tonight,” I said bitterly.
Rafe studied me. “Why tonight?”
I opened my mouth, ready with a practical answer—wind shifted, curiosity override, needed to assess her proximity.
But another answer, quieter and less comfortable, slid up beside it.
Because she’s been talking to us.
Not directly, no. Not with words we could understand. But she narrated into that little metal box every night, pointed glass at us, muttered to herself about pack structure and bonding and hunting patterns.
She’d talked like we were…people.
She’d called Blue Tag handsome.
She’d cursed when the cameras failed. She’d murmured apologies when she tranquilized one of my wolves for collaring, her fingers gentle on his fur.
She’d stood there—small and stubborn and alone at the edge of the valley—and poured her care into the dark.
And tonight, when the wind shifted and her scent rolled over me like a fog—coffee and sweat and fear carved into determination—I’d gone closer.
Too close.
“Curiosity,” I said finally. “Stupidity. Take your pick.”
Rafe snorted softly. “Curiosity,” he repeated. “Right.”
“She’s not staying in my cabin forever,” I said, more defensively than I liked. “This is temporary. Just until I figure out where to put her that doesn’t make everything worse.”
“Good luck with that,” he said dryly.
“You could show a little more faith.”
“I have all the faith in the world that you’re going to tie yourself into knots over this woman,” he said. “And that Mara’s going to threaten to neuter you if you keep making decisions without consulting the council.”
“They’ll fall in line,” I said. “They always do.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Because they trust you. Don’t make that trust a joke, Kieran.”
His words cut, because they were right.
I scrubbed a hand over my face. The residual ache in my bones from the shift pulsed with every movement—a reminder that even this body had limits.
“I’ll call a meeting in the morning,” I said. “You, Mara, Kellan, Edda. Anyone else who has an opinion.”
“Everyone’s got an opinion,” he said. “That’s the problem.”
“I’m aware.”
The wind shifted again, carrying a new thread of scent—faint, but enough.
I stiffened.
Rafe saw my face and tilted his head back, nostrils flaring. His expression darkened.
“Northridge,” he said. “They’re closer than yesterday.”
“Too close.” My hands curled into fists.
“I can run a patrol,” he offered. “Push them back. Make it clear—”
“No.” I cut him off sharply. “Not alone. Not with them this close to our inner circle. I’ll come.”
He eyed my blanket. “You’re gonna go scare off the big bad wolves with your man thighs?”
A low growl rumbled in my chest. “Give me ten minutes.”
He grinned, sharp as teeth. “I’ll meet you at the ridge.”
As he loped away toward the dens, I stood alone for a heartbeat under the skeletal reach of the pines, feeling the pull of two worlds.
Behind me, in the cabin, a human woman lay awake in my bed, wrapped in my blankets, breathing my air.
Ahead, in the forest, my enemies crept closer.
And somewhere under my breastbone, a wild, dangerous part of me—the part that had lifted its head when I’d heard her voice shake but not break—bared its teeth and whispered: *Mine.*
I shoved it down and went inside to find pants.
***
The council met at dawn.
By then, Sage had finally fallen asleep, her scent softening with the edge of exhaustion. I’d stood in the doorway for too long, watching the shallow rise and fall of her chest, listening to the little unconscious sounds she made when she dreamed. Rafe would’ve had things to say about that if he’d caught me.
He didn’t. He was already at the old logging clearing by the time I padded into the trees, half-shifted.
I didn’t bother with the human pretense of calling this a “meeting space.” To us, it was just a clearing with a big fallen log and enough open sky to see hawks.
Mara was there, seated on the log with her long legs folded under her. In human form, she looked like what she was—older than the rest of us by a stretch, her hair gone mostly silver, dark skin lined at the eyes and mouth by a lifetime of laughter and grief. She wore layers against the cold—wool sweater, thick vest, scarf wound tight. But nothing could hide the crackling energy under her skin, the way the air always seemed to bend around her just a little.
Beside her, Edda bounced on her toes, too much energy in too small a body. At twenty, she was the youngest of the inner circle, all sharp cheekbones and wild curls and eyes that missed nothing. Kellan squatted a few feet away, massive even in human form, with shoulders like boulders and a resting scowl that scared the pups and amused no one else.
They all turned when I stepped into the clearing. I’d pulled on jeans and a thermal, boots laced but no jacket. Cold never bothered me much, even in skin.
“You look like shit,” Edda said cheerfully. “Rough night, Alpha?”
“Edda,” Mara said mildly.
“What? He does.” Edda crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m just saying, maybe next time don’t shift twice in three hours and then pace the perimeter like a caged tiger.”
I grunted. “Noted.”
“Did you at least get a good look at Northridge?” Kellan asked, voice low and gravelly.
“Smelled them more than saw them,” Rafe answered, dropping down onto the log beside Mara. “They’re testing the boundary. Again.”
Mara’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “The boy,” she said. “Cassian?”
“He’s a man now,” Kellan rumbled. “Size of a damn moose.”
“And half the sense,” Rafe added.
“He also has teeth,” I said. “And ambition. That combination’s never ended well.”
“They haven’t crossed the peace line,” Mara said. “Yet.”
“They will,” I said. “They’re waiting for something to tip.”
“And now,” she said, dark eyes sharp on mine, “you’ve given them something.”
The words hit like physical blows, but I didn’t flinch. “Yes.”
“Tell us,” she said. “Everything.”
So I did.
I told them about the observation tower, about Sage’s nightly vigils with her glass and her little talking box. About Pack A’s comfort with her presence, the way they’d accepted her scent on the wind as part of the valley.
I told them about my curiosity, my arrogance. The way I’d pushed too close to the hill. The wind shift. The flash of terror in her eyes when our gazes had locked.
I told them about the shift at the base of the tower—the pain, the bones, the way she’d watched.
When I finished, the forest was silent around us. Even the birds seemed to be listening.
“You shifted in full view of a human,” Kellan said at last, his voice like distant thunder. “An *unbonded* human. Not Mate. Not pack.”
“Yes,” I said evenly.
Edda whistled low. “That’s one way to spice up a Tuesday.”
Mara’s gaze didn’t leave my face. “Why?” she asked, echoing Rafe’s question from the night before. “Truly.”
I opened my mouth.
Closed it.
“I miscalculated,” I said. “I thought I could get closer, assess her…” I searched for the right word. “Intent. See if she was…a threat.”
“And you thought the best way to do that was to walk out of the trees like a ghost story,” Edda said.
“I thought I could stay in the dark,” I snapped. “That she wouldn’t see me. That if she did, she’d dismiss it as a trick of the light. I’ve done it before.”
“With hikers,” Mara said quietly. “Drunk teenagers. Hunters too busy looking through their scopes to notice the shadows. Not with someone who’s made a life out of watching.”
Her words slid under my skin like needles.
“She knows the land,” she continued. “She knows the wolves. She watches for patterns. You expected her not to see *you*?”
“I didn’t—” Shame bit hot. I forced the rest out. “I didn’t expect her eyes to be that sharp in low light. I didn’t expect her to…stay. Most humans look away when they feel us looking back.”
“She didn’t,” Rafe said. “She stared you down until you broke.”
“I didn’t break,” I growled. “The moon was high. The shift was coming. I would’ve lost shape one way or another. I chose when.”
“Not where,” Edda pointed out.
“Enough,” Mara said, and the air rippled faintly around her. “What’s done is done. You can’t unsnarl a knot by shouting at it.”
Kellan grunted. “So what now? We have a human in the den. A woman who’s seen more than any outsider in a hundred years. And Northridge sniffing around our borders like they smell blood.”
“Three options,” Rafe said grimly. “You know them.”
Mara’s eyes darkened. “Don’t speak of them like they’re equal.”
“They’re not,” I said. “Killing her is a last resort. Erasing her memory is…dangerous. I won’t risk turning her into a shell.”
“‘Shell’ is a generous word,” Mara muttered. “Memory work that deep shreds people, Kieran. It leaves them hollow and humming with pain. I’ve refused it before and I’ll refuse it again unless she begs me for it herself.”
“They sometimes do,” Kellan rumbled.
“And they don’t know what they’re asking for,” Mara snapped.
I let them argue. It was a familiar dance, honed over years of hard choices and harder consequences. My mind was already two steps ahead, running through contingencies, maps, possible safe houses.
“Third option,” Edda said, bringing us back. “Keep her.”
“Temporarily,” Rafe put in quickly, glancing at Mara. “Not…pack. Just. Here.”
“Until when?” Kellan asked. “Until Northridge gets tired of circling and moves on? Until she convinces herself this was a fever dream and begs to go back to her old life? Until she dies of old age?”
He said it bluntly, but not unkindly. He was a realist. He always had been.
“Until we can be sure what letting her go will do,” I said. “To us. To her. To the balance.”
“Balance,” Mara echoed softly. “Funny word, that. As if we didn’t live kneeling on a knife’s edge already.”
“We can’t keep her forever,” Rafe said. “She’s right about that much. She has people watching for her. A job. A paper trail. Humans talk when their own go missing.”
“Then we don’t let her go missing,” I said. “We keep her visible. Audibly. She checks in. She files…abbreviated reports. Enough to keep questions from digging too deep.”
“You want to integrate her,” Edda said slowly. “At least on paper.”
“On the surface,” I agreed.
“Into us,” Kellan said.
“Not…into.” I searched for words that wouldn’t twist around in my mouth. “Around. Adjacent. She does her work. We do ours. Paths cross carefully, under controlled circumstances.”
“And if she runs?” Rafe asked quietly. “If she fakes a report, says ‘Oops, I slipped, I’m back in town now, gonna grab a latte and tell everyone about the naked man who turned into a wolf at my research site’?”
A low, ugly sound rose in my throat at the mental image of Sage running from us, eyes wild, skin pale.
“She’s not stupid,” I said.
“Stupid is different from scared,” Rafe replied. “I’ve seen smart people do very dumb things when their world breaks in half.”
“We watch her,” I said sharply. “We watch each other. No one is alone with her without backup. We don’t corner her. We don’t threaten her more than necessary. We give her…space. Information. Enough control that she doesn’t feel like a trapped animal.”
“And you think that will make her…what.” Edda cocked her head. “Decide she prefers us to her old life?”
I met her gaze. “I think she’s been living alone at the edge of the world for a long time. I think she talks to herself more than she talks to anyone else. I think—”
I stopped.
“What do you *think,* Kieran?” Mara asked softly.
I exhaled through my teeth. “I think,” I said slowly, “that if we handle this right, she could become…an asset. A bridge. Someone who understands both sides.”
Kellan snorted. “You want to make her pack.”
“No,” I said sharply. “Not unless—”
Unless.
The word hung there.
Mara’s eyes narrowed. “Unless what.”
“Unless she chooses it,” I said. “Of her own will. With full knowledge of what it means. And that is so unlikely it might as well be a fairy tale. So no. We do not *plan* for that.”
“But you think it,” Edda said.
I clenched my jaw. “What I think is my own business.”
“Not when it drags all of us into the path of danger,” Mara snapped. Energy crackled faintly around her fingers, making the fine hairs on my arms lift. “You bring a human into our den, you let her see you naked and bleeding on the forest floor, and now you’re spinning stories about her choosing us? About her wanting this? Wanting *you*?”
Heat flashed under my skin, part anger, part something more animal.
“That’s not what I said,” I growled.
“It’s what you *feel*,” she said. “Don’t bare your throat to me and then complain when I bite.”
A low rumble rippled from my chest. The forest stilled around us—the birds going quiet, the wind pausing, as if waiting for blood.
Rafe stepped between us, hands up. “Hey. Let’s not do the dominance thing before breakfast, okay? If you two start throwing power around, the pups are going to wake up screaming.”
Mara’s jaw tightened.
I forced my shoulders to loosen one fraction at a time. “I am not mating a human,” I said, each word clipped. “I am not chaining our future to someone who can barely accept we exist. This isn’t about *me.* It’s about the pack.”
“And you don’t think those two things are tangled,” Mara said quietly.
“They don’t have to be,” I said stubbornly. “Not if we keep our heads.”
Edda snorted softly. “Says the man who shifted in front of a camera because he couldn’t stay away from the pretty scientist.”
I turned a glare on her. “There was no camera on the tower.”
“Not that you could see,” she muttered.
“Enough,” Mara said again, more firmly this time. She exhaled, lines of strain etched deep around her eyes. “We can stand here and gnaw on each other until sunset, or we can accept that Kieran has made a choice and decide how to survive it.”
“That’s why you’re our favorite,” Rafe said under his breath.
She gave him a half-hearted swat.
“Kieran’s right about one thing,” she continued. “Killing the girl solves one problem and creates a dozen more. The valley changes when blood like that is spilled. The balance shifts. The old places remember. And Northridge…they’d feel it. They’d come looking.”
“They’ll come anyway,” Kellan said grimly.
“Yes,” she agreed. “But this way, perhaps, we meet them on ground of our choosing, not theirs.”
“So we keep her,” Edda said. “For now.”
“For now,” Mara echoed.
Kellan’s scowl deepened, but he dipped his chin—a grudging assent. “She steps out of line,” he rumbled, “puts any of us in danger—”
“I’ll handle it,” I said.
He held my gaze for a beat too long, then grunted. “You better.”
“I’ll assign rotations,” Rafe said. “Someone with her at all times, but not hovering. We’ll make it feel…normal.”
“As normal as living with monsters can feel,” Edda said lightly.
Mara shot her a look. “You will not use that word around her,” she said sharply. “Or *any* word like it. We are who we are. If we speak of ourselves as monsters, she will never see us as anything else.”
“You think if we talk pretty enough, she’ll forget the bones snapping and the fur and the teeth?” Edda asked.
“No,” Mara said. “But words carve grooves in the mind. They shape how people think. We will not shape her into our own nightmares.”
Silence fell, heavier now, but less jagged.
They’d follow my lead. They always did. That didn’t mean they had to like it.
“We’ve staked everything on your judgment more than once,” Mara said quietly, her gaze still on my face. “You brought us through the fire when your father died. You held us together when half the valley wanted to run or roll over for Northridge. I trust you, Kieran. We all do.”
Her hand tightened briefly on my forearm, fingers warm even through the thin fabric of my sleeve.
“Don’t make me regret that,” she said.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I won’t,” I said.
“See that you don’t,” Kellan rumbled.
Edda flashed me a sharp grin. “Worst case, we can always feed you to the humans and tell them you’re the last of our kind.”
Rafe laughed. “Trust me, they’d send him back for being too grumpy.”
The tension broke, just a little. Enough for everyone to breathe again.
“Go,” Mara said, waving a hand. “If she’s anything like you describe, she’ll be awake by now. Humans panic more when they’re left alone with their thoughts than when someone is there to argue with them.”
“She’s very good at arguing,” Rafe said. “You’re going to love her, Mara.”
Mara snorted. “Don’t you start, too.”
As they dispersed, I stood for a moment, feeling the pulse of the forest, the steady hum of my people in the back of my mind.
Sage was awake. I could feel it. A restless, bright presence pressing against the edges of my perception.
I turned toward the cabin.
This was a choice.
I’d made it.
Now I had to live with it.
And so did she.
***
Sage was exactly where I’d left her: on the pallet by the fire, blankets wrapped around her shoulders like a cocoon, hair mussed, eyes wide open and staring.
She didn’t flinch when I opened the door. Her gaze slid to me, sharp and assessing.
“You don’t have a clock,” she said.
I blinked. “What?”
“In here.” She gestured vaguely around the cabin. “No clock. No watch on your wrist. Do you just…guess what time it is by the angle of the sun like a very muscled sundial?”
“A *what*?”
“Never mind.” She pushed herself upright, wincing slightly. “I need to pee.”
The bluntness startled a huff of laughter out of me. “Bathroom’s still where I told you it was.”
“Yeah, well.” She eyed the inner door as if it might sprout fangs. “Do you have some kind of…code I need to know? Like, knock twice, spin three times, don’t say ‘Bloody Mary’ into the mirror or it will eat me?”
“Humans are weird,” I muttered.
She narrowed her eyes at me. “That’s rich coming from the guy who turns into a wolf.”
“You haven’t actually *seen* me in that form,” I said.
“No, I just saw you *becoming* it,” she snapped. “Trust me, that was enough.”
Her pulse had ticked up—I could see it fluttering at the base of her throat. Fear, sharp and bright, threaded through the air between us.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said quietly.
“Stop saying that like it makes a difference,” she shot back. “You already did.”
I frowned. “I—”
“You took away my choices,” she said, voice shaking. “You decided what I could know, where I could go, who I could talk to. You put me in a room with no windows and one door and then told me how *lucky* I am that you didn’t choose murder or a magical lobotomy instead.”
Guilt pricked under my skin, sharp as nettles.
“I did what I had to,” I said.
“That line probably sounds great in your head,” she said. “You should write it on a motivational poster. ‘Do what you have to. Someone else will deal with the trauma.’”
“That’s not—”
“I get that you’re in a shitty position,” she said, cutting me off. “I do. I know what it’s like to have your work and your world threatened by people who don’t understand it. But don’t you *dare* stand there and act like we’re on equal footing right now.”
I swallowed hard. “I’m trying to protect you.”
“No,” she said. “You’re trying to protect *yours.* And that’s fine. That’s…that’s probably what I’d do, too, if there were a secret population of shape-shifters depending on me not fucking up. But let’s not pretend I’m anything but collateral damage in your disaster plan.”
She was right.
I hated that she was right.
“I can’t change what’s already been done,” I said roughly. “I can only decide what happens from here.”
“And from here,” she said slowly, “you’re going to…what. Show me around? Give me a tour? ‘Welcome to Shifterland, please keep your hands and feet inside the ride at all times’?”
A corner of my mouth twitched. “Something like that.”
“Great.” She scrubbed a hand over her face. “Field trip to Crazyville.”
“I’ll answer your questions,” I said. “As many as I can. Some things I won’t tell you. Not yet. Some things…I can’t put into human words.”
Her eyes flashed. “Stop saying ‘human’ like it’s some exotic species. You’re human too.”
“No,” I said quietly. “We’re not.”
“You bleed,” she said stubbornly. “You speak. You use tools, drive cars, pay taxes, presumably.”
“That last one is debatable,” I muttered.
She plowed on. “You have language. Culture. You’re not…animals.”
“We’re both,” I said. “You’re not wrong. But you’re not right either.”
She glared at me for a long moment. Then, abruptly, she shoved the blankets aside and swung her legs to the floor.
She was still wearing the clothes I’d first seen her in up close—a faded green thermal shirt, black fleece-lined leggings, thick wool socks. The shirt had ridden up a little while she slept, revealing a strip of pale skin at her lower belly.
Something low in my gut tightened.
I looked away.
The bathroom door clicked shut behind her.
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding and scrubbed a hand over my face.
This was going to be…complicated.
A minute later, the toilet flushed. Water ran. She emerged, cheeks faintly pink, hair damp where she’d splashed water on her face.
“You know,” she said, grabbing the mug I’d left near the hearth and sniffing it suspiciously, “if you wanted me dead, poisoning me would be a lot less dramatic.”
“It’s just tea,” I said. “Mara made it.”
“Who’s Mara?”
“Our healer.”
“Your brain surgeon,” she muttered. “The one you wanted to double as a memory assassin.”
“She refused,” I said.
“Good for her.” She sipped. Her shoulders loosened a fraction. “Okay. Ground rules.”
I blinked. “Ground…what?”
“If I’m going to be here,” she said, “and you’re going to be all ‘Alpha of the pack’ at me—”
“Is that how I was?” I asked, startled.
“Oh, one hundred percent,” she said. “Big, dangerous, broody. Lots of ‘I have no choice’ energy. Very dramatic. Anyway. If *that’s* how it’s going to be, then we need rules.”
“Humans and their rules,” I muttered. “Fine. Say them.”
“One.” She held up a finger. “No lying. Omission, okay, I’ll tolerate some of that because I get that your people have secrets and rituals and probably a very intense book club or something.”
“A what?”
“Never mind.” She took another swallow of tea. “Two. No touching me without my permission unless I’m about to fall off a cliff or get eaten by something bigger than you.”
I stared at her. “You think there’s something bigger than me in these woods?”
She raised an eyebrow. “You sure you want to challenge the local moose to a head-butting contest?”
I sighed. “Fine. No touching without permission. Unless you’re in danger.”
“Physical danger,” she clarified. “Not ‘danger of learning something uncomfortable.’”
I grunted. “Agreed.”
“Three.” Her voice softened, just a fraction. “You don’t make decisions about my mind without me. No surprise memory magic. No ‘whoops, there goes last Tuesday.’ If we ever get to the point where that’s on the table, it’s my choice.”
I met her gaze. “I’d rather kill you than do that,” I said quietly.
Her mouth parted. Her fingers tightened around the mug.
“That’s supposed to be…comforting?” she asked.
“It’s supposed to be honest,” I said. “What Mara can do… It’s not gentle. It’s not clean. It leaves scars we can’t see but that never stop aching. I won’t ask her to cut into you like that unless *you* beg for it, and even then, I might refuse.”
She swallowed. “Good to know you’d honor my agency in how I’m traumatized.”
“Agency,” I repeated. “You’re very big on that word.”
“Yes,” she said shortly. “Now. Four.”
“There’s more,” I muttered.
“Four,” she said, “I get to document.”
I blinked. “Document what.”
“Your world,” she said simply. “Your people. Your…pack. Not with cameras—not yet, I know that’s a no-go. But in a journal. Observations. Behavior. Social structures. Everything I can see and understand.”
I stared at her. “You want to do…science. On us.”
“It’s not ‘on’ you,” she said. “It’s with you. Maybe. Eventually. If you let me. But even if you don’t, I *have* to write this down, Kieran. I can’t not. My brain doesn’t work that way. I observe, I record, I analyze. It’s how I process the world. If you take that away from me…” She swallowed again. “You might as well let your healer scramble me.”
Her words cracked something in my chest.
“I would not—” I broke off. “Fine. You can write. In here. On paper. No electronics. No data leaving this valley until I say so.”
“And if you never say so?” she asked.
“Then it stays in your head and on your pages,” I said. “A secret history.”
“History without witnesses isn’t history,” she muttered.
I shrugged. “Your people have myths. Stories about us that got twisted and warped. Maybe someday yours will become one more.”
A strange look crossed her face. “You…know about those?”
“We’re not illiterate,” I said dryly. “We know what you whisper around your campfires.”
“Do you know,” she asked slowly, “that a lot of those myths started as…warnings? Stories about respecting the wild. About not going into the forest alone, not pissing off the things that live there.”
“Some of them started as hunting manuals,” I said. “Where to find us. How to kill us.”
“Fair point,” she conceded.
“Your rules,” I said. “We’re at four.”
She hesitated.
“What?” I prodded.
“Four.” She lifted her chin. “You don’t make me watch you…change. Not unless you have to. Not unless there’s no other way.”
The request shouldn’t have stung.
It did.
I folded my arms over my chest. “Why.”
“Because watching it once almost broke something in my head,” she said bluntly. “Because my nightmares have already upgraded from ‘wolf attack’ to ‘body horror special on late-night cable.’ Because if I have to hear your bones snapping again while I can still see your face and your eyes and know that it’s *you,* I might lose my ability to…talk to you like this.”
“Like what,” I asked, when she didn’t continue.
“Like you’re a person,” she whispered.
The word sliced through the air between us.
For a moment, all I could hear was my own heartbeat.
“I am a person,” I said.
“I know,” she said quickly. “I know. It’s just…my brain is trying to put you in one box or the other. Wolf. Or man. Beast. Or human. And you keep…messing that up.”
“It’s what we are,” I said. “Both. Neither. In between.”
“I know,” she said again, through clenched teeth. “And I *hate* that my brain is this…binary. But it is. So if you want me to…to function, to help, to *be* here, then I need some time where you are just *this.*” She waved a hand at me. “Two legs. Opposable thumbs. Questionable blanket choices.”
I exhaled slowly. “Fine,” I said. “I won’t shift in front of you unless there’s no other choice.”
“Thank you,” she said, sagging a little in relief.
“Is that it?” I asked.
“For now,” she said. “I reserve the right to add more rules later.”
“Of course you do,” I muttered. “Humans and their amendments.”
She huffed a little laugh, quickly smothered.
“My turn,” I said.
Her eyes narrowed. “For rules?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, this should be good.”
“One,” I said. “You don’t step outside this cabin alone without someone from my pack with you. Ever. Day or night. If you need to pee behind a bush, you tell someone. If you want to walk, you tell someone. No exceptions.”
Her spine stiffened. “You’re—”
“I’m not doing this to control you,” I said tightly. “I’m doing it because there are things in these woods that will smell your humanity from a mile away and think ‘that’s interesting’ in all the worst ways. Some of them have our eyes. Some of them don’t.”
“Other packs,” she said.
“And other things,” I said. “Mountain lions. Bears. Humans with guns. You think your ranger friends won’t shoot at movement if they see something they don’t recognize?”
“My ranger friends know me,” she argued. “They know I don’t wander around in elk season wearing brown.”
“Do they know you’re living with monsters?” I asked.
She flinched.
“Two,” I continued, softer now. “You don’t write or say anything about us that could be understood by someone outside this valley. You can record your impressions. Your feelings. Your questions. But no real names. No precise locations. No full descriptions of what we can do.”
“That defeats the point of…” She trailed off at my look. “Fine. I’ll redact your…superpowers.”
“Three,” I said. “You don’t run. Not just physically. Not with your mouth. You don’t try to manipulate your friends into coming here. You don’t send coded messages in your radio reports. You don’t play coy with people who think they know you. If you slip, if you hint at something you shouldn’t and that hint attracts attention, Northridge won’t be the only pack whose attention we draw.”
“Government,” she said. “Agencies. Hunters.”
“Yes,” I said. “And some of *your* people are much worse than some of *mine.*”
She swallowed. “I know.”
We held each other’s gaze for a long moment.
“Four,” I said. “You tell me the truth. If you have nightmares. If you’re panicking. If you’re plotting to stab me with a butter knife and run into the woods. I’m not a mind reader. I can smell your fear but not what you plan to do with it.”
“I’m not plotting to stab you,” she muttered.
“Good,” I said. “You’d need a sharper knife.”
Her lips twitched. “Is that a challenge?”
“Please don’t stab me,” I said.
She huffed. “Fine. No stabbing. Yet.”
“Yet,” I repeated.
We regarded each other over the rim of her mug.
Outside, the wind shifted again, rattling the branches against the roof. The smell of approaching snow threaded through the smoke and sage and human.
And under it all, a slow, hot awareness curled low in my gut, coiling tighter every time her gaze snagged on my face, every time her tongue darted out to wet her lips when she thought I wasn’t watching.
This was dangerous.
She was dangerous.
Not because of what she’d seen.
Because of what she could become.
“All right, Dr. Holloway,” I said roughly, needing to move, to *do* something before I started stripping my own rules for parts. “Let’s go meet the pack.”
Her fingers tightened on the mug.
She inhaled sharply.
And despite the fear I could smell pumping off her skin, there was something else there too.
Curiosity.
Interest.
The first faint thread of something that might, one day, look like belonging.
***