Chapter 39
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
MILO
Calder had healed.
By yesterday, the deep gash along his side had already faded into a thin silver mark beneath the dark fur and by bedtime, it vanished entirely.
If I hadn’t seen the blood for myself, watched the wound close inch by inch beneath my hands while panic clawed through my chest, I probably would’ve convinced myself that I’d imagined the entire thing.
But I hadn’t imagined it, and the strangest part wasn’t even the miraculous healing.
It was the fact that Calder had let me stay beside him through all of it.
That lingered with me more than anything else.
The memory of his weight against me while I tried to keep him conscious.
The way he looked at me even through the pain, still worried about my wellbeing.
The terrifying realization that somewhere in the middle of all that blood and panic, losing him had stopped feeling hypothetical.
I studied the dark, now familiar shape standing near the tree line.
Moonlight filtered through the branches above him, silver catching along the thick fur over his shoulders and the powerful line of his body beneath it. From a distance, he almost blended into the forest itself, like something the woods had shaped rather than something living inside them.
But I knew him now.
I knew the sound of his breathing when he slept beside me. The way his voice thickened with desire when I touched him. The quiet patience in him that somehow made something that large and dangerous feel safer than anyone I’d ever known.
And yeah, maybe it was insane that I could look at a seven-foot cryptid standing half in shadow and still think he was beautiful.
But I did.
Not despite what he was, because of it. Because every impossible part of him had become tied to something achingly familiar inside me.
I watched him start toward the cabin.
Even the way he moved weakened my knees.
Slow confidence beneath all that size and strength, every step deliberate without needing to prove itself.
There was nothing human about the shape of him beneath the moonlight, and still my body reacted to him as if every move he made was a brush across my skin.
Desire hit low and warm before he even reached the porch.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked when he was a couple of feet away.
I snorted softly. “You make that sound like I’m the weird one here.”
“I am not standing on a porch watching you.”
“That’s because you lurk professionally.”
That pulled a real smile, small but unmistakable beneath the sharp angles of his face.
And God, that did something unfair to me every single time.
“Wait here,” I instructed.
“I was already here.”
“Right,” I said, already turning back toward the cabin door. “Good point.”
His gaze tracked me the entire way inside. Even after the cabin door closed behind me, I still carried the quiet weight of his attention with me, and somewhere along the way, that feeling had become comforting in a way that I couldn’t quite explain.
My small Bluetooth speaker sat near the kitchen window where I’d left it charging earlier that afternoon. I grabbed it along with my phone.
When rejoined Calder, his attention settled immediately on the speaker in my hand, interested in the same focused way he approached everything he was still learning.
“What is that for?” he asked.
“A speaker.”
“I know what a speaker is. I do not know why you brought it outside.”
Well, that made more sense.
I huffed out a quiet laugh, descending the few small steps to meet him. “Because music sounds better out here.”
Calder watched me set it down. “Humans bring those into the forest often.”
“Yeah,” I replied, connecting my phone, “but most of them have terrible taste in music.”
Calder considered that with complete seriousness, like he was filing it away as legitimate information about human behavior.
A second later, “Northern Attitude” by Noah Kahan and Hozier drifted softly through the clearing, low enough that the music folded naturally into the sounds of the forest instead of drowning them out.
The song had lived in my playlists for years at this point, through late night editing sessions and long drives home. The words brought moods I never knew how to explain to other people. Something about it always felt a little lonely and a little hopeful at the same time.
Calder went still listening to it, attentive.
His gaze moved briefly toward the speaker again before lifting back toward the trees around us. “It sounds crowded,” he said after a moment.
I laughed before I could stop myself. “Crowded?”
“There are many separate sounds competing for attention.”
I leaned back against the porch railing, smiling despite myself. “You know, most people would just say they like the song or they don’t.”
“I do not dislike it.”
That surprised me enough that my eyebrows lifted slightly. “You don’t?”
“No.” His head tilted slightly as he continued to listen “I am trying to understand why humans connect emotion to sound this way.”
That got my heart racing, because he was trying to understand me, actually trying.
And somehow that made sharing the music feel strangely vulnerable all of a sudden, like I’d handed him something more personal than I meant to.
The first song faded naturally into “Bloom” by The Paper Kites, softer now, slower, the kind of song that seemed built for quiet moments and low light.
I’d found that particular one years ago and never really let it go afterward. It lived in every playlist I made when I wanted to feel something without fully admitting I wanted to feel it.
For a second, neither of us spoke. Then, without really thinking about it, I held out my hand toward him. “Come here.”
Calder’s attention dropped to my hand before returning to my face. “What are we doing?”
I smiled despite myself. “You really do need context for everything.”
“Most actions benefit from explanation.”
There was no defensiveness in it. Just honesty.
“This one’s simple,” I said. “I’m teaching you how to dance.”
His gaze flicked briefly toward the speaker. “I was not aware that dancing required instruction.”
“Trust me. For you? It definitely does.”
That earned me the faintest narrowing of his eyes. Which, honestly, only widened my grin.
He stood still long enough that I thought he might refuse, then he crossed the remaining distance between us.
Now that he stood this close, I had to tilt my head back slightly to hold his gaze.
Moonlight caught silver along the heavier fur around his shoulders, and being this near him after almost losing him a day earlier did something dangerous to my ability to think straight.
“You look very serious about this,” I murmured.
“You said you were teaching me.”
The sincerity in that answer hit me so hard I almost laughed again.
Almost.
“It’s dancing. Not military training.”
“I do not know enough about dancing to confirm there is a difference.”
That got an actual laugh out of me. “Honestly? That explains a lot.”
His gave me what I could only assume to be a glare, though curiosity lingered underneath it more than offense. By now I’d started recognizing the difference—when Calder was confused, when he was learning, when he was quietly trying to decide whether humans were toying with him again.
I reached for one of his hands carefully, guiding it to my waist before settling my other hand higher along his arm.
The heat of him pressed around me immediately. Solid, familiar, and close enough now that I could feel the slow rhythm of his breathing beneath everything else.
“There,” I said, more quietly this time. “That’s it.”
Calder’s attention dropped briefly to where I’d positioned him before returning to my face again, his concentration so complete it sent warmth curling low through my body.
“You are concentrating too hard.”
“You implied there was a correct way to do this.”
I smiled. “Okay, fair. But mostly you just follow the rhythm.”
“The crowded sound.”
I grinned immediately. “Yeah,” I breathed. “The crowded sound.”
This time when his hand moved at my waist, it wasn’t cautious at all. He drew me closer naturally, like somewhere in the middle of all that concentration he’d stopped thinking about where to place his hands and started focusing on me instead.
The movement brought our bodies flush together beneath the low music, and suddenly it was a lot harder to remember that I’d started this as a joke.
He learned fast and by the second turn he was already anticipating the movement before I guided him into it.
Calder’s warmth engulfed me, his body moving carefully with mine despite the difference in our size. Every time my fingers tightened against his arm, his attention shifted back to me immediately, focused in that quiet, unwavering way that still made my pulse stumble through eye contact alone.
Calder’s gaze lifted briefly toward the dark forest surrounding the clearing before settling back on me.
“I want to show you something,” he whispered
I didn’t hesitate for a single second. “Okay.”
Something in his expression softened, then he stepped back carefully, his hand slipping from my waist. “You will need to hold onto me.”
“Well,” I said, “that’s either incredibly romantic or the beginning of my murder documentary.”
That earned me the faintest twitch near the corner of his mouth again.
God. I liked making him do that.
Calder turned and crouched slightly in front of me.
Understanding hit a second later. “Oh,” I said. “Oh, you mean literally.”
“Yes.”
Excitement fluttered unexpectedly low in my stomach.
Up close like this, Calder felt overwhelming in every possible way.
Heat radiated beneath the thick dark fur covering his shoulders and back, clean forest scents clinging to him—pine, damp earth, rain-soaked bark, cold night air.
Underneath all of it was something warmer that belonged only to him, something my body had already started recognizing before my brain caught up.
“You’re enjoying this entirely too much,” I muttered.
“I can sense you are smiling.”
“Shut up.”