Chapter 15 Dangerously Falling #2
“I had time.” He shrugged, but there was something underneath the casual gesture. Pride, maybe. Or just the satisfaction of doing something useful. “Want to see it?”
“Show me.”
Michael launched into an explanation of inventory tracking and receipt categorization that should have been boring.
Would have been boring, from anyone else.
But he talked with his hands, gestured at columns and figures, got genuinely excited about something called “rolling averages” that I was pretty sure I'd never understand.
And I watched him.
Watched the way the light caught the silver threading through his hair. The way his brow furrowed when he was thinking through a problem. The way his whole face changed when he smiled, lines crinkling around eyes that had seen too much grief and somehow still found reasons to be warm.
“You're not listening,” he said.
“I'm listening.”
“You're staring.”
“I can do both.”
Michael's ears went pink. He looked back down at his notebook, but I caught the smile he was trying to hide.
“As I was saying. If you implement weekly inventory counts, cross-referenced with your supply orders, you'll catch discrepancies before they become problems. Here.” He slid the notebook across the desk. “I made you a template.”
I picked it up, studied the neat columns and careful labels. “You made me a template.”
“You keep repeating things I say.”
“I'm processing.”
“You're stalling.”
I set the notebook down, met his eyes. “I'm grateful. That's what I am. This is...” I gestured at the organized files, the clear system, the evidence of hours of work he'd done for no reason other than wanting to help. “This is more than I asked for.”
“You asked for someone to handle your books. I'm handling them.” Michael's voice was light, but something in his expression said he understood exactly how much this meant. “Besides, it gives me something to do. It turns out that I can teach an old Alpha new tricks.”
“Old?”
“Experienced. Distinguished. Seasoned like fine lumber.”
“Did you just compare me to wood?”
“Quality wood. The expensive kind.” He was laughing now, quiet and warm, and the sound of it did something dangerous to my chest. “Oak, maybe. Something sturdy.”
“I can't tell if I'm being insulted or complimented.”
“Both. It's a gift.”
I shook my head, but I was still smiling. Couldn't seem to stop. “You're ridiculous.”
“And you're avoiding the inventory conversation. Come on.” He stood, gathered some of the papers. “Let's walk the floor. I want to see how the current system works so I can figure out where it's falling apart.”
“It's not falling apart.”
“Daniel. You have lumber from three different orders mixed together in the same staging area with no labels. It's not falling apart because it was never together in the first place.”
He was right. I knew he was right. But admitting it meant admitting that I'd been letting things slip, that the business I'd built with Claire had been slowly sliding into disorder while I focused on pack threats and Alpha responsibilities and everything except the mundane work of keeping a mill running.
“Fine,” I said. “Show me what I'm doing wrong.”
Michael's expression softened. “You're not doing anything wrong. You're just doing too many things at once.” He moved toward the door, paused with his hand on the frame.
I followed him onto the mill floor.
Michael stopped every few minutes to ask questions that I didn't have answers to. Where did the supplier invoices get filed? How often did we reconcile inventory with shipping manifests? What was the process for tracking orders from intake to delivery?
The answer to most of his questions was “Jake handles it” or “we figure it out as we go.”
Michael made notes. Lots of notes. His handwriting was small and precise, filling pages with observations and suggestions while I trailed behind him feeling increasingly useless.
“You know,” he said, pausing near the finishing stations, “for a man who doesn't understand his own business, you've done remarkably well.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“It's supposed to make you realize that instinct counts for something.” He tucked his notebook into his back pocket, turned to face me. “You know your workers. You know your product. You know what matters even if you can't put it in a spreadsheet. That's not nothing, Daniel.”
“It's not enough either.”
“No. But that's why you have me now.” His smile was quiet, certain. “We make a good team. You handle the people, I handle the numbers. Between the two of us, we might actually keep this place running.”
We. The word settled in my chest like warmth, like something I hadn't realized I'd been missing until it was offered.
“I like having you here.”
The words came out before I could stop them. Honest in a way I usually avoided, because honesty led to vulnerability and vulnerability led to pain.
But Michael just smiled, warm and understanding. “Good. Then stop questioning it and let me reorganize your filing system. I promise it won't hurt.”
“The filing system or the reorganizing?”
“Both. Probably.”
We walked back toward the office together, close enough that our shoulders nearly brushed. The mill hummed around us, machinery and voices and the familiar rhythm of work getting done. And for a moment, just a moment, everything felt simple.
Like maybe this was what I'd been missing. Not just help with the business. Not just someone to handle the numbers.
Someone to stand beside.
We spent another hour in the office going over his proposed system. Michael explained things with patience I didn't deserve, drew diagrams when words failed, made me repeat key concepts back to him until he was satisfied I actually understood.
“Okay,” he said finally, setting down his pen. “I think that's enough torture for one day.”
“It's not torture.”
“You've been staring at that same page for ten minutes.”
“I'm processing.”
“You're lost.” But he said it gently, with affection instead of judgment. “It's okay. We'll go over it again tomorrow. And the day after that. Eventually some of it will stick.”
“You have a lot of faith in my learning abilities.”
“I have faith in repetition.” He stretched, shoulders popping, and I tried not to notice the way his shirt pulled across his chest. “Besides, you're not as hopeless as you pretend.
I've seen you memorize patrol schedules and pack dynamics without breaking a sweat. Numbers are just another language.”
“A language I don't speak.”
“Yet.” He stood, started gathering his things. “That's what the 'yet' is for. Growth. Potential. All that inspirational nonsense.”
I stood too, moved around the desk to lean against its edge. Closer to him than strictly necessary. “Michael.”
He paused, looked up at me. “Yeah?”
“Thank you. For this. For all of it.” I gestured vaguely at the organized files, the notebooks, the evidence of his care. “I know you didn't have to—”
“I wanted to.” His voice was soft. “You gave me something to do when I needed it most. Let me return the favor.”
We stood there for a moment, I could smell him, coffee and clean laundry and something warm underneath. Could see the pulse jumping in his throat.
I wanted to close the distance. Wanted to find out if his mouth was as soft as it looked, if he'd lean into me or pull away, if this thing building between us was as real as it felt.
The office door opened.
Rafe stood in the doorway, expression pleasant and unsurprised, like he'd expected to find us exactly like this. Close enough to touch. Charged with something neither of us was acknowledging.
“Sorry to interrupt.” His voice was smooth, easy. “Luke said you'd be here. I had some questions about the patrol rotation.”
Michael stepped back immediately, putting distance between us that felt deliberate and painful. “I should get going anyway. Those projections won't finish themselves.”
He gathered his papers, his notebooks, all the evidence of the morning we'd shared. Moved past Rafe with a nod that was polite but nothing more, and disappeared into the main mill.
I watched him go, feeling something slip through my fingers that I hadn't realized I was holding.
Rafe closed the door behind him.
“He likes you,” he said, moving into the office with that fluid grace that made my wolf pay attention. “Michael. He's careful about showing it, but he likes you.”
“Rafe—”
“And you like him.” Those amber eyes tracked to me, something flickering in their depths. “I can smell it on you, Daniel. The want. The way your body responds when he's close.”
Heat crawled up my neck. “That's not your business.”
“No, it isn't.” He moved closer, and I caught his scent now. Pine resin and cold river stones and something sharper underneath that I couldn't name. “But I know what it's like to want something you think you can't have. To be so careful about keeping distance that you forget how to close it.”
“What do you want, Rafe? You said something about patrol rotations.”
“I lied.” He was right in front of me now. Close enough that I could see the fine lines around his eyes, the way his pulse jumped in his throat. “I wanted to see you. Talk to you. Alone.”
Something cold settled in my stomach. Warning. My wolf stirring, not with attraction but with unease.
“About what?”
“About you.” Rafe's voice dropped, went soft. Almost tender. “You're wound so tight, Daniel. All that wanting with nowhere to go. It must be exhausting.”
“I'm fine.”
“You're drowning.” His hand came up, fingers reaching for my chest. “Let me help. Just to take the edge off. Just so you can think clearly enough to figure out what you actually want.”
I caught his wrist before he could touch me. Held it. Not hard enough to hurt, but firm enough that he couldn't move forward.
“Don't.”
Rafe's expression flickered. Surprise, maybe. Or something that looked like it. “Daniel—”
“I said don't.” I released his wrist, stepped back, put the desk between us like a barrier. “I don't know what you think is happening here, but you're wrong.”
“I'm offering—”
“I know what you're offering.” My voice came out harder than I intended, Alpha weight bleeding through despite my best efforts to stay calm. “And the answer is no. It was no the moment you walked in here, and it's going to keep being no.”
Rafe's pleasant mask cracked, just slightly. Hurt underneath, or a performance of hurt. I couldn't tell anymore.
“I didn't mean to offend you.”
“Then what did you mean?”
He was quiet for a moment. His hands, which had been reaching, dropped to his sides. “I meant to help. You've been good to me, Daniel. Better than I deserved. I thought maybe I could give something back.”
“By seducing me?”
“By making you feel less alone.” His voice cracked on the word. Real or fake, I couldn't tell, and that uncertainty made me angrier than the proposition had. “I know what loneliness looks like. I've been drowning in it since Ash Hollow. And I thought—”
“You thought wrong.” I moved toward the door, opened it. “Get out.”
“Daniel—”
“Now.”
Rafe's jaw tightened. For a moment I thought he'd argue, thought he'd push, thought this would turn into something I'd have to handle as Alpha instead of just as a man who'd been propositioned by someone he didn't want.
But he just nodded once, stiffly, and walked toward the door.
He paused at the threshold. Didn't turn around.
“I'm sorry,” he said quietly. “I read it wrong. Read you wrong. It won't happen again.”
“No. It won't.”
“And Daniel?” His voice was barely above a whisper now.
“I'd appreciate it if this stayed between us.
I'm already the outsider. The stray everyone's watching.
If they knew I'd done this, tried this...” He swallowed hard enough that I heard it.
“I'm just starting to feel like I might belong here. Please don't take that away.”
I should have said no. Should have told him that secrets were poison and that pack trust required honesty.
But I thought about what Luke had said. About treating a traumatized wolf with suspicion and isolation. About turning someone into the enemy by expecting them to be one.
Rafe had made a mistake. A bad one. But he'd also stopped when I told him to, apologized when I demanded it, asked for mercy instead of assuming it.
“This stays between us,” I said finally. “But Rafe? If you ever try something like this again, with me or anyone else in this pack, I'll know. And we'll be having a very different conversation.”
“Understood.” He didn't look relieved. Just tired. Defeated. “Thank you.”
He left. The door closed behind him with a quiet click.
I stood alone in my office, hands shaking slightly, and tried to figure out how the morning had gone so sideways.
Michael's scent still lingered in the room. Coffee and warmth and something that made my chest ache with wanting.
Rafe's scent was there too. Sharper. Wrong in ways I couldn't name.
I moved to the window, watched Rafe cross the mill yard toward the tree line. Watched him disappear into the forest with his shoulders hunched and his head down.
He looked small. Broken. Like a man who'd bet everything on a bad hand and lost.
I wanted to believe that's all it was. A lonely wolf making a desperate play, misreading signals, reaching for connection in the wrong direction.
I wanted to believe I hadn't just made a mistake by letting him walk away.
But as I stood there watching the empty tree line, I couldn't shake the feeling that something fundamental had shifted. That the careful balance I'd been maintaining was starting to crack.
And somewhere underneath all of it, buried under duty and suspicion and the weight of being Alpha, was the simpler truth:
I wanted Michael.
Wanted him with a fierceness that scared me. Wanted mornings in this office and arguments about filing systems and the way he laughed when I pretended not to understand things. Wanted to close the distance between us and find out what we could build together.
But wanting was dangerous. Wanting made you vulnerable. And I had too many wolves depending on me to let vulnerability win.
So I went back to the desk. Picked up Michael's notebook. Started reading through his careful notes about inventory systems and supply tracking.