Wren
The sound woke me. Scraping. Dragging. Something heavy being moved across stone.
I counted my breaths in the darkness. One. Two. Three. The sound came again, from somewhere below. The library.
I found him in the corner where the two tallest shelves met, surrounded by chaos.
Furs. Cushions. Blankets I hadn’t seen before, pulled from storage rooms I hadn’t explored. He was arranging them with a focus that bordered on frantic, his wings half-extended, feathers catching the lamplight as he worked.
He didn’t notice me in the doorway. Or if he did, he couldn’t stop.
I watched him drag another fur into position, smoothing it with hands that trembled slightly. His movements were precise despite the trembling. Deliberate. He knew exactly where each piece needed to go, even if he couldn’t have explained why.
The walls of whatever he was building were made of books.
I stepped closer. He’d used the heavy volumes as foundation.
Law texts, encyclopedias, the massive histories that took two hands to lift.
Above them, technical manuals and scientific treatises formed a second layer.
And lining the inner edge, within easy reach of wherever someone might sit, poetry.
Fiction. The novels I’d been reading this week.
He remembered which ones I’d touched.
“Tavrin.”
He went still. His back was to me, wings rigid, and for a long time, he just stared.
“You should. Not be awake.” The words came out broken, separated by gaps where language failed him. “I am. This is.”
“What is it?”
He turned. His eyes were pure gold in the lamplight, pupils slit, and something in his face looked almost ashamed.
“I could not sleep. After what happened. I needed to. Build. This. I did not want you to. See.”
“Why not?”
“Because.” He stopped. Started again. “Because I do not understand it. And I cannot. Explain. What I do not understand.”
I walked toward him. He tracked my movement, body tense, like he wanted to reach for me and was physically restraining himself.
The nest was beautiful. That was the word for it, even if it felt strange to apply it to a pile of furs and cushions and books. Beautiful in its obsessive care. In the way he’d curved the walls to create shelter. In the way he’d made a space that was soft and warm and protected on all sides.
“The books aren’t damaged,” I said.
He blinked. “What?”
“You organized them. By weight at the bottom, reference in the middle, and the ones I’ve been reading at the top where I can reach them.” I touched the spine of a poetry collection I’d finished yesterday. “Even in the middle of whatever this is, you remembered that I’m short.”
“They are yours.” His voice dropped, rough and certain. “Your books. Your space. I would not. Damage. What is yours.”
The old Wren would have cataloged this as danger. This Wren leaned closer.
Instead I said: “How does someone sit in it?”
He stared at me. “What?”
“The nest. Where do the cushions go? How are the walls supposed to shelter?” I held his gaze. “I want to see.”
Something shifted in his expression. Not understanding, exactly. More like permission.
He reached for me. His hand engulfed mine, burning hot, and he drew me forward into the structure he’d built.
The furs were softer than anything I’d ever touched.
The cushions cradled my weight as he guided me down, arranging me against the curved wall of books with a gentleness that made my chest tight.
Then he settled behind me. His chest against my back, legs bracketing mine, wings folding over us both until we were cocooned in warmth and darkness and the sound of his racing heart.
“You’re shaking,” I said. I could feel it now that I was pressed against him. A fine tremor running through his entire body, like a wire pulled too tight.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
His breath stirred my hair. “Because I want. And I am trying. Not to.”
“Not to what?”
Silence. His hands were pressed flat against the furs on either side of me, not touching me anywhere except where our bodies naturally rested together. Deliberate distance. Controlled.
“Take.” The word came out scraped raw. “I am trying not to. Take. To keep.”
I turned in his arms. It required rearranging, awkward in the confined space, but he let me move. Let me shift until I was facing him, my knees on either side of his hips, looking up into eyes that burned gold in the darkness.
His hands stayed pressed against the furs. Claws extended, I realized. Digging into the fabric. Holding himself in place.
“What if I want you to keep me?” I asked.
His breath caught. Actually caught, like the words had hit him somewhere physical.
“You do not. Understand.” Each word was a fight. “If I stop fighting. If I let go. I won’t be able to pull back. I will keep you. I will never let you leave. I will spend every. Moment. Of my existence. Making sure you are safe and warm and. Mine.”
“That’s supposed to scare me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He made a sound. Not a word. Something between a growl and a keen, frustration and desperation tangled together.
“Because it should. Because wanting. To own someone. To possess them. To build a. Nest. Around them and never let them go. That is not. That is not what you. Deserve. You deserve. Freedom. Choice. A mate who does not. Become a monster when he. Looks at you.”
I touched his face.
His whole body jerked. The claws sank deeper into the furs, and I heard fabric tear.
“For years,” I said. “For years I was useful. I kept accounts and copied documents and made myself valuable because valuable things don’t get thrown away. And not once. Not one single time. Did anyone look at me like nothing else existed.”
His eyes were fixed on my face. Unblinking.
“Then you show up at a bride market and pay a fortune for a scribe with ink on her fingers. And you bring me to a mountain full of books. And you build me a nest out of my favorite things while I sleep.” My voice cracked, just slightly.
“And you shake. Because you want me so much. And you’re afraid it’s wrong to want. ”
“It is. Wrong. To want this much. To need. This much.”
“Says who?”
He had no answer for that.
“Maybe I’m tired of being useful,” I said. “Maybe I’m ready to be wanted. Maybe I want someone to look at me like you’re looking at me right now, and maybe I don’t care if that’s obsession or madness or transformation or whatever this is.”
I leaned closer. His breath came faster, each exhale burning hot against my lips.
“So maybe I’m ready to want something too.”
“What.” The word was barely a whisper. “What do you want?”
“You.” I said it simply. Clearly. A statement of fact. “I want you.”
He kissed me.
Not gentle. Not careful. He kissed me like something had broken loose in him, like all the restraint had finally snapped, and I was ready for it. I kissed him back with everything I had.
His hands released the furs and found my hips instead. I cataloged the details because I couldn’t help it: his mouth tasted like smoke and something wild, his skin burned against mine, the feathers on his shoulders were softer than silk when my fingers found them.
He made a sound against my mouth. A chirr. Low and vibrating, pleasure without language, and I filed that away too. The sound a transforming Roc makes when he’s losing his mind with wanting.
His wings wrapped around us. Not blocking the light this time. Blocking everything. The whole world reduced to the circle of his arms and the fever radiating from him and the desperate press of his mouth on mine.
I was straddling his lap and even sitting he was so much bigger than me, his chest a wall, his hands spanning my entire waist. I had to crane my neck to reach his mouth and even then he had to curve down to meet me.
He pulled back just enough to breathe. His forehead pressed against mine. Both of us panting.
“If we bond now.” His voice had gone guttural, barely human. “If I claim you now. It cannot be. Undone. And you deserve. Time. To be certain.”
I wanted to argue. Every nerve in my body wanted to argue.
But he was right. And the fact that he could stop, that he could pull himself back from the edge even now, told me everything I needed to know about the man underneath the transformation.
“Okay,” I whispered. “We wait.”
His exhale shuddered through both of us. He pressed his face into my neck, breathing me in, and his wings stayed wrapped around us like he couldn’t bear to let even the air touch me.
We rearranged ourselves without speaking. He leaned back against the book-wall and I leaned back against him, his arms around my waist. The nest was warm. He was warmer. I could feel his heartbeat against my spine, still too fast, gradually slowing.
“Yours,” he whispered. So quiet I almost missed it. “All of it. All of me. Yours.”
I thought about the bestiary entry. The Sky Jewel, a fragment of his life force, already given for me. But claiming. Bonding. The bestiary hadn’t mentioned any of that. And he’d said it couldn’t be undone.
There was more to learn. More I needed to understand before we took that step.
But that was for tomorrow. Right now, wrapped in his wings, feeling his heart beat against my spine, I let myself just be held.
I closed my eyes. For the first time in years, I didn’t count anything. Not his heartbeats, not my breaths, not the books or the furs or the seconds until something went wrong.
I just let myself be held.
In the drowsy space before sleep took me, I thought of Elspeth. I should write to her. Tell her I was safe. Tell her I’d found something I hadn’t known I was looking for. Tell her to hold on, just a little longer, and I’d find a way to bring her here too.
Tomorrow. I’d figure it out tomorrow.