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“But I’m not leaving.”

She waited for the rest. The condition, the demand, the price. She’d learned long ago that everyone stayed because they wanted something. Her father had stayed because she was his property. Her aunt had stayed because obligation was cheaper than guilt. The pack had stayed as long as she was useful, then stepped around her when she wasn’t.

Chris shifted in the chair. He didn’t say anything else.

She sat on the cot with her hands between her thighs and her throat burning and her wolf pulling toward a man she was certain would hurt her eventually, because everyone did. She watched him watch the trees. She waited for him to push, to pry, to circle back to the questions she hadn’t answered.

He didn’t push.

She had been alone for twelve years. Alone in a cottage at the edge of a compound full of wolves who’d forgotten she existed. Alone with notes in a locked drawer. Alone with the smell of tobacco woven through her earliest memories. She’d built her life on the understanding that alone was safe, because alone meant no one could get close enough to leave a mark.

Chris sat in her broken doorway, guarding a threshold she hadn’t asked him to guard, and said nothing.

She pulled the blanket off the cot. Wrapped it around her shoulders. The night air was already coming through the gap where the door used to be, cold, clean, carrying pine.

“If you’re going to stay,” she said, “don’t talk to me.”

“Okay.”

She lay down on the cot with her back to him, pulled the blanket over her shoulders, and pressed her face into the pillow. Her throat ached. Her hands had finally stopped trembling. She could hear Chris’s steady breathing, could feel the bond humming between them, a frequency she couldn’t tune out no matter how hard she pressed her face into the cotton.

She did not sleep. But she closed her eyes, and for the first time in longer than she could remember, she didn’t wait and listen for the sound of footsteps on the porch. Someone else was.

Chapter 5 - Chris

The cottage was silent except for Sloane’s breathing.

Chris sat in the wooden chair with his back against the wall, facing the broken doorframe. The night air pushed through the gap where the door used to hang, carrying pine, damp earth, and cold. His wolf was awake beneath his ribs, alert, aimed at the woman on the cot behind him.

He didn’t look at her. He’d told her he wouldn’t talk, so he didn’t talk. He watched the treeline darken from grey to black. An owl called from the ridge. His ears tracked it, filed it, dismissed it.

Behind him, Sloane turned over. The cot creaked. He heard the fabric drag across the thin mattress, heard her exhale through her nose, heard the small, tight sound of someone trying to settle a body that wouldn’t cooperate.

She turned again. He could hear it. Onto her back, this time. Then onto her side. Then flat on her back again, one arm flung over her face.

The silence stretched.

“Stop listening to me,” she mumbled irritably.

Chris kept his eyes on the trees. “I’m not.”

“You are. I can feel you tracking every breath I take.”

He almost smiled. “That’s the bond. Not me.”

She made a sound, low in her throat, not even attempting to hide her frustration. The cot springs shifted as she sat up. He heard her feet touch the floor, heard her press the dish towel against her throat again. Her breathing was shallow, careful, the intake of someone working around swelling.

“You should ice that,” he said, still not looking back. She huffed in response.

“I don’t have ice.”

“I could get some from the kitchen stores.”

“Then you’d have to leave.”

“Yes.”

She didn’t tell him to go. So he sat.