Chapter 3
LEARNING TO LAND
MICHAEL
The Hollow Pines Community Center gym had a smell you couldn’t scrub out if you tried—old sweat baked into rubber mats, disinfectant that only ever half-worked, and that faint metallic tang of pennies that always clung to a place where people bled for fun.
The fluorescent lights were already humming, too bright for six in the morning, turning everything a sickly yellow.
The ring in the corner looked like it belonged to another decade—frayed ropes, canvas stained darker in patches that never truly lifted.
There were ghosts in that ring. Not the supernatural kind.
Just the ordinary kind. Men who came here to prove something.
Boys who didn’t know what they were becoming yet.
Today it was just me and Nate.
He stood across from me, bouncing lightly like he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to fight or run. He’d always been built like Anna—long-limbed, restless, graceful in that way that made you forget he was capable of being a menace. But the bite changed things. It didn’t just mark him.
It rewrote him.
I climbed through the ropes with the pads under my arm and tried not to show how tired my bones felt. “Hands up,” I said. “No thinking. Just move.”
Nate’s mouth twisted. “You’re already in drill-sergeant mode?”
“I’m always in drill-sergeant mode at six a.m.”
“I hate mornings.”
“You’re the one who texted me at five-thirty.”
“Yeah, because if I don’t get this out of me, I’m going to—” He cut himself off, jaw flexing, gaze flicking away like he didn’t want to say the word.
Wolf.
I lifted the pads. “Then hit.”
He did. A jab that was clean, sharp, and—on purpose—soft.
It landed with that careful restraint he’d been wearing like a second skin these past months. Like he was afraid of what came out when he didn’t choke it down.
I waited through a few more. Let him pretend.
Then I lowered the pads. “You’re holding back.”
Nate’s shoulders tightened. “I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m being careful.”
“There’s a difference,” he snapped, then immediately looked guilty, like he hated his own tone.
I didn’t flinch. I’d gotten good at not flinching. “Careful is control. This is fear.”
His eyes went sharp, gold flickering just under the brown. “You don’t know what it feels like.”
I took a breath through my nose and tasted the old rubber in the air. “No,” I said quietly. “I don’t.”
That was the hardest part, most days. Not being able to step inside whatever hell my kid was carrying now. Not being able to fix it.
Nate blew out a rough laugh that wasn’t a laugh at all. “Last week,” he said, like he couldn’t stop the words once they started, “I dented Evan’s truck door.”
I blinked. “Dented it how?”
“By leaning.”
I stared at him.
His cheeks went red. “I swear, I just leaned back while we were talking. Like a normal human being. And the metal—” He made a frustrated gesture with both hands. “It crumpled. Like it was made of soda cans.”
“And Evan?”
Nate’s eyes narrowed. “Evan didn’t get mad.”
“That’s good.”
“It’s worse.” Nate paced two steps, then caught himself like he was remembering we were in a ring. “He just looked at me like—like I was something breakable and dangerous at the same time, and he said, ‘We’ll work on control.’”
I couldn’t help it. A sound escaped my throat—half-laugh, half-sigh. “Sounds like good advice.”
“Infuriating advice,” Nate said, then looked down at his hands like they didn’t belong to him anymore. “I don’t want to work on control. I want to be normal again.”
I raised the pads again, because if I let silence sit too long, grief always slid in like it owned the place. “Normal is overrated,” I said. “Hit.”
He hit harder this time. A jab-cross that snapped my arms back, not enough to hurt but enough to remind me there was something else inside him now. Power that didn’t ask permission.
“Again,” I said.
He moved, fast. Too fast.
Three punches in a burst—clean, controlled, and still, underneath it, restrained. Like he was fighting himself more than he was fighting me.
“You almost shifted yesterday,” I said between hits, because sometimes the only way to talk about things with Nate was sideways.
His eyes flashed. “Someone cut me off in traffic.”
I barked a laugh. “That’ll do it.”
“I’m serious.” He struck again, then stopped, breathing hard. “I had to pull over. Like—full-on hands shaking, hearing too much, smelling too much. I was one bad thought away from claws in the steering wheel.”
“In a parking lot?”
“Do you know how humiliating it is,” he said, voice pitched high with panic and humor and anger all tangled together, “to be doing breathing exercises next to a dumpster while a grandma in a Buick stares at you like you’re about to rob her?”
I lifted my eyebrows. “Were you about to rob her?”
“No.”
“Then you’re fine.”
Nate made a noise of pure teenage suffering even though he hadn’t been a teenager in years. “Evan says it’ll get easier.”
“Evan would know.”
Nate’s mouth softened at the name, then he immediately tried to cover it with sarcasm. “Yeah. Evan the Wolf Whisperer. Evan the Patient Saint. Evan who can look at me like I’m losing my mind and somehow make me feel like I’m still me.”
I held the pads steady and watched him. “That’s what you need.”
He swallowed, throat bobbing. “I know.”
We went another round. I forced him to push, but not break. Forced him to stop apologizing with every punch. His body wanted to be stronger. His instincts wanted to be faster. The fear was what kept him small.
When I called time, we leaned on opposite ropes, breathing hard.
Nate wiped sweat off his brow with the back of his wrist and stared at the empty gym like it might explain itself if he stared long enough. “Gideon’s also got me doing… whatever the hell that is,” he muttered.
“The forest stuff.”
“Yeah, the forest stuff.” He rolled his eyes, then the expression turned uneasy. “It’s not like Evan’s training. Evan’s practical. He’s like, ‘Here’s how you breathe. Here’s how you ground. Here’s how you shift without ripping your jeans.’”
I snorted. “Useful.”
“Gideon is like, ‘Stand in this creek and listen.’”
“How long?”
Nate’s lips pressed together. “Three hours.”
I stared. “Nate.”
“I know!” He threw his hands up. “I kept thinking I was going to get hypothermia and die, and Gideon would just be standing there like, ‘The water will decide if you’re worthy.’”
“That man is a menace.”
“He’s… weirdly comforting,” Nate admitted, like it surprised him. “It’s not like he’s gentle, but he’s not… scared of it. Of me.”
My throat tightened before I could stop it. “Evan isn’t scared of you either.”
Nate’s gaze snapped to mine. “No.” His voice went quiet. “Evan’s not scared of me. He’s scared for me.”
He said it like it was the difference between being loved and being tolerated.
I nodded once. “That’s love.”
Nate looked away fast. “Don’t start.”
“Start what?”
“The dad speech.” He shoved his mouth into a grim line, but his eyes were too bright. “I’m already in a ring. I can only take so much emotional damage before I tap out.”
I lowered my hands, pads hanging at my sides. “Your mom used to say something,” I said before I could talk myself out of it.
Nate went still. Like the gym had gone quiet around us.
I stared down at the scuffed canvas. “She said… people don’t fall apart because they’re weak. They fall apart because they were carrying too much alone.”
Nate swallowed hard. “That sounds like her.”
“It was always her.”
Nate rubbed his face hard, then tried to shake it off. “Okay,” he said, too brisk. “Enough. One more round.”
I stepped back in. Lifted the pads. “This time, you don’t get to be afraid of your own strength.”
He hesitated.
Then he nodded. Once. Like he’d made a decision.
He came at me harder—still controlled, but with more truth in it. The punches snapped into the pads with sharp, satisfying thuds, my arms absorbing the impact. He wasn’t holding back to spare me. He was learning how to carry what he was now without letting it carry him.
That was the point.
When I called time again, Nate’s chest was heaving, sweat slicking his hair back. He didn’t look calmer, exactly—but he looked less trapped.
I dropped the pads to my sides. “Better.”
He huffed. “I hate that you’re right.”
“That’s my job.”
He hopped down from the ropes, then stopped and looked at me with an expression that made my stomach sink. Not anger. Not panic.
Worry.
“Dad,” he said.
I stiffened before I could help it. “What?”
He took a breath like he was bracing himself. “You’re not okay.”
I stared at him, dumb for a second. “I’m fine.”
Nate’s eyes narrowed, and suddenly I could see Anna in him—not the look, but the refusal. The don’t-lie-to-me that could peel the truth right off your bones.
“You’re not,” he said, softer. “You’re alone in that house. You’re renovating like you’re trying to tear grief out of the walls. You’re—” He swallowed. “You’re drinking too much.”
Heat crawled up my neck. “Nate—”
“I’m not trying to shame you.” His voice cracked, just a little. “I just… I keep getting this new life handed to me. Evan, the pack, Gideon’s weird creek therapy, all of it. And you’re stuck in the same place, carrying the same weight, and it feels wrong.”
My mouth went dry. “I’m not stuck.”
“You are.” Nate stepped closer, not challenging, just… there. Present. “And I hate it.”
I couldn’t look at him. I stared at the pads like they were going to save me.
Nate’s voice dropped. “Daniel’s been checking on you.”
My head snapped up. “What?”
“Evan told me.”
I tried to joke my way out. “Daniel has better things to do than babysit me.”
Nate didn’t smile. “You say that like you don’t think you’re worth the time.”
I opened my mouth, then shut it.
“Mom would want you to let people in,” Nate said, and his voice went gentler, like he was handling something fragile. “I want you to let people in.”
I swallowed. The gym suddenly felt too bright, too empty. “Daniel offered me a job,” I admitted.