Chapter Eight
CHAPTER EIGHT
MIRA
My body is a map of sudden fault lines, ready to break apart at the lightest touch. I press a palm to the frost-edged window, breathing out to blur my reflection as my fingers splay against the glass. Logan leans against the rough-hewn table, watching, his gaze a weight I can’t carry but can’t give up. The wind screams against the cabin walls, the fire flickering in gasps across my face as I struggle with the wild, terrifying pull of instinct that unfurls inside me like a brand-new limb. The cold metal of my research equipment bites into my skin, a small hurt, like an old scar. Trivial now. Logan’s voice finds me in the dark, low and certain: “You’re safe now.” My legs fold under me as he guides me to an armchair, his broad hand a promise on my shoulder. The room is a blur of sparse furnishings and unsteady breath, pine and smoldering wood, until all I know is his touch and the burn in my veins, uncontainable.
Every instinct in me flares awake, blinding. I shudder, trying to breathe around the fist that closes in my chest. I know the symptoms—my notes spread across the table describe them in clinical detail—but it feels so different from the inside. Like being ripped open, stitched back together, and not recognizing the shape. I twist the steel band of my flashlight between my fingers, grounding myself in its coldness. One breath. Two. Three.
Logan shifts, the scrape of wood against the floor loud in the tense quiet. My eyes snap to him, drawn to the shadowed edges of his shoulders, the steady burn of amber eyes. “You’re safe,” he says again, the words like a net beneath my freefall.
“What if you’re wrong?” I whisper, pressing the heel of my hand to my forehead. My thoughts tumble over one another, a chaotic rush I can’t untangle. My voice sounds thin and distant, like a radio station fading in and out. “I can’t—I don’t know how to—” I clench my jaw to stop the spiral of words.
The storm is relentless. Wind claws at the cabin, a wild harmony with the blood pounding in my ears. It’s like being underwater and on fire at once, the need to give in overtaking everything. I blink hard, forcing my gaze to the pages scattered across the table. Clinical language, crisp and logical. Mating fever, they say. Magical catalyst. Like any of this can be reduced to letters on a page.
I fumble with my flashlight, my hand shaking. The storm. The need. I fight to pull the threads of myself back into place.
“Breathe,” Logan murmurs, and the room narrows to the slow, certain pull of his voice. “Focus on me.”
I don’t know which version of me he means. The Mira with graphs and charts and academic detachment, or this raw, overwhelming creature, all instinct and heat. His eyes are steady on mine, like he’s holding the air in the room still. My legs fold under me as he guides me toward the armchair, my skin aching with the need to touch, to claim, to let go.
“Focus,” he says again, softer this time. He moves with the kind of grace I’ve only ever documented in the wild, coaxing me to sit, his hand a constant, comforting weight. My skin remembers the shape of his touch.
I sink into the chair, the cushions swallowing me whole. The rhythm of the storm, the staccato beat of my own pulse, the shiver that wracks me from spine to fingertips—I feel like a live wire, ready to ignite.
“Logan,” I gasp, the word torn from somewhere deep, a place I didn’t know existed.
The cabin narrows to a point. To Logan. The fire throws shadows against the walls, the scent of smoldering wood mixing with my own breathless panic. I want to hold on to something solid, but everything feels like smoke and mirrors. His presence is an anchor against the storm, an unbreakable line I want to follow into the dark.
“You’re going to be fine,” he says, his voice like a promise. The room around us blurs, unimportant, a sketch of a place I used to be. The real map is here, beneath my skin, traced in a language I’m just beginning to learn.
“Show me,” I plead, and Logan is there, his touch and his breath and the low, certain words that guide me toward who I truly am.
My skin tightens against my ribs like a thin layer of glass. If I breathe too deep, I might crack. The familiar rhythms of the world slip through my fingers, and even the light has changed: harsher, splintered, reflecting off angles I never noticed. My senses spark with fresh wounds. I’m new and old and afraid all at once. He holds me together with careful hands, knowing exactly where I might break. His eyes are still, unshaken, pulling me into his orbit until I spin at his pace, rotating around a brand-new sun.
I can’t focus, can’t settle into the shifting shape of myself. Delicate strands of hair begin to unfurl along my arms, dusting my skin with fur. The air is too thin; the cabin is too small. I look up at Logan, panic and awe twisting together like a double helix in my veins. He’s the fixed point in my universe, and even in this wild, impossible moment, his gaze steadies me.
“You’re okay, Mira.” His voice holds the certainty of a hundred thousand heartbeats, each one a promise.
The strands thicken, the fur spreading across my neck and shoulders, and I gasp at the rawness of it all. I feel every breath, every shiver of hair, every quiver of skin. Logan is there, impossibly close, his touch both clinical and caring as he trails his fingers along the newly emerging contours of me. He maps me like a familiar landscape, like a place he’s always known.
“Let it happen,” he says, and his words leave a trail of heat that scorches a path through the cold of my fear.
I brace myself against the pull of instinct, an unending stretch of terror and wonder. Each moment is a universe, every sensation a planet to be explored. I’m more and less than I’ve ever been, a constellation of Mira and wolf, of science and instinct, each trying to eclipse the other. My heart matches the frantic beat of the storm outside, a thundering chaos I can’t outrun.
Logan stays with me through every heartbeat, every breath. He kneels by the chair, eye-level with my unraveling. There’s so much kindness in his face, so much knowing. My throat aches, raw and exposed, and the fear in my chest finally unclenches its fist. I let it go, let myself go, the last threads snapping loose in a wild, dizzying freefall.
“Mira,” he says again, like an answer, like an anchor.
The cabin pulses with the storm, the sound of it matching the breathless rush in my ears. Logan’s fingers move against my skin with perfect patience, perfect trust, and I blink back tears at the absolute rightness of it all. Of this moment. Of us.
His hand trails to my neck, lingering there, and everything inside me focuses into a single, undeniable truth.
“This is who you truly are.” Logan leans in, claiming me with a controlled bite that sinks through every layer of fear and doubt. It’s deep and dark and permanent, an exclamation mark against my skin. The world spins, and I’m no longer afraid of breaking.
My eyes find his, and I see myself reflected there, this new and wild version, this truest self. The storm swells around us, and we let it. It can’t touch us here, in this cabin that holds the whole world inside it. It can’t change what’s already changed. The wind howls, the glass trembles, and still we stay here, the quiet intensity of our mutual acceptance sealing the bond like blood.
I feel the shift happen slowly, then all at once. Bones crack and realign, muscles stretching into new shapes as fur ripples across my transformed body. The wild song of instinct rises in my throat, and I let it out in a long, exultant howl that echoes off the cabin walls. Logan's wolf answers, a deep rumbling counterpoint that settles into my bones like it's always belonged there.
We stand together in the flickering firelight, two wolves bound by something ancient and unbreakable. Logan's dark fur brushes against mine as he circles me, checking me over with gentle nips and nudges. I lean into his strength, marveling at the way my body responds to his—not with the skittish uncertainty of a new wolf, but with the easy familiarity of a mate. It's as if some part of me has always known him, has always been waiting for this moment.
He leads me to the door, nosing it open, and together we step out into the raging storm. The wind whips through my fur, the snow stinging my muzzle, but I barely feel the cold. Logan's heat is a furnace at my side, his presence a shield against the worst of winter's bite. We run together through the trees, our paws churning up sprays of powdery snow. The night is alive with a thousand new scents and sounds, the forest's secrets laid bare to my heightened senses.
I feel the pull of the moon like a physical thing, a tidal force that sings in my blood. It's exhilarating and terrifying all at once, this wildness that's always lived beneath my skin. Logan guides me through it with the patience of a born alpha, his presence a steady reminder that I am not alone in this strange new world.
We run until the storm subsides, until the first tentative rays of dawn filter through the trees. Exhausted and exultant, we make our way back to the cabin, our pelts heavy with melting snow. As we cross the threshold, I feel the shift begin again, my body remembering its human shape. Logan's arms are there to catch me as I stumble, my legs unsteady on two feet instead of four.
He holds me close, his skin warm against mine, and I breathe in the scent of him—pine and smoke and something uniquely Logan. "You did it," he murmurs, his voice rough with emotion. "You were incredible."
I look up at him, my heart so full it aches. "I couldn't have done it without you," I whisper, tracing the line of his jaw with trembling fingers. "You saw me when I couldn't see myself."
He leans into my touch, his eyes flashing with a possessive heat that sends a shiver down my spine. "I will always see you, Mira. In any form, in any world, you are mine and I am yours."
The truth of it settles into my bones, a certainty as deep and unshakable as the earth itself. I tilt my head back, baring my throat in a gesture of complete surrender. Logan's growl vibrates through me as he lowers his mouth to my offering, his teeth grazing the delicate skin where he marked me.
In any form. In any world. For once I don’t think about science, about my research, nothing but what he feels like against me. Nothing but my mate.