CHAPTER 22
JONATHAN
She was curled against me, her breath warm at my neck, her skin pressed to mine, fitting into me perfectly.
Her bare leg was slung over my hip, her chest against my ribs, one arm pinned beneath mine while the other rested across my stomach.
I lay on my back, body half-turned into hers, as if even in sleep we couldn’t help but reach for the other.
That terrified me more than anything else tonight. The danger, the chase, even the thing that had called out in the woods…none of it shook me like the feel of her arm draped across my ribs. Like the way she fit so naturally in the space I’d never meant to leave open.
The sky above Cryer’s Point had gone deep and silver, stars burning low, the kind of night that made you believe the world had edges worth falling over.
Far below the cliffs, the dark sea shimmered with faint phosphorescent light, each slow roll of the tide stirring blue-green sparks across the surface of the water.
My heart hadn’t fully slowed yet, and I wasn’t sure if it was because we’d run for our lives…
or because I’d finally given in to something I’d been running from for longer. Maybe both. I didn’t want to ponder it.
But I couldn’t stop myself from cataloging every detail.
The way her hair clung to her temples with sweat.
The bruises blooming faintly now across her thighs where some small branches had whipped her and where I had been less than gentle during sex.
The soft curve of her bottom lip, swollen and red, from my bites.
The rise and fall of her chest. Each sign a reminder that this was real.
I’d almost tasted death tonight. Then I’d tasted life. Both with her in my arms.
And now came the part I feared most.
Shame settled in. Quiet like fog. It clung to me.
It burrowed into my bones as I lay there, skin to skin with the one person I wasn’t sure I should have touched.
Yes, I’d finally told her. Been honest, after I’d been dishonest. But this part of me that she had glimpsed tonight, the part I spent half my life trying to bury…
nothing could prepare a person for that. The reality of it. Especially a human.
She shifted slightly, her thigh sliding more snugly between mine as if drawn deeper into the heat of my body. Her arm moved, her fingers settling against my chest. It was just a small movement, but it sent a pulse of panic through me.
She’d seen me.
Like that.
The claws, the teeth, the weight of what I really was. She’d seen the shift. Not just the change—but the thing beneath it. The monster I fought tooth and bone to keep from the surface. The one I had control of sometimes but not others.
Was she pretending it hadn’t happened? Was she hoping it hadn’t?
Or worse, was she lying here because she didn’t know how to leave?
I turned my head slightly enough to see her face in the moonlight. She looked peaceful and tired. Her lashes flicked once, then again, and I realized she wasn’t asleep.
So, I asked the question. Quietly and carefully, as if I was about to touch a live wire.
“Did I scare you?”
The silence after was a canyon, deep and endless. I could hear everything in it. The rustle of leaves. The distant trickle of water against rock. My own breath turning shallow.
Her pause cut deeper than a yes.
I tried to save her from it. “It’s okay if you say yes.”
She still didn’t speak.
So, I did.
“Sometimes I lose myself…when I shift.”
Her gaze turned to me, soft but unreadable. “Are they painful?” she asked quietly.
I hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah. But not how you’d think. It’s not screaming pain. It’s more like…a gym pump on fire. Blood turns molten, everything swells. Muscle, nerve, instinct. Every cell wakes up and starts howling.”
I felt her fingers brush down over my stomach. Not far. It was a whisper of movement, but it helped to ground me. A reminder that I wasn’t alone in this memory.
Blanche smirked faintly. “I can attest to that.”
That earned a crooked grin from me, but it faded as quick as it came.
“There’s a point where your heartbeat spikes—like you’ve sprinted full tilt uphill and your body’s about to flatline.
Vision blurs. Thoughts splinter. You forget who you are and start remembering what you were.
” My voice dropped lower. “Your senses go feral. You can taste wind. Hear your own blood. Everything becomes about scratching, biting, tasting, running. Clothes feel like cages. You want to tear free. You have to.”
I swallowed hard, voice rough. “You ever lie in bed on a hot night and you just…can’t sleep until everything’s off? No fabric, no pressure against you. Just skin and air?”
She nodded, slowly.
“It’s that. But primal. And when it hits, it’s bliss and madness all at once.
You run until you forget what stopping means.
And eventually…” My eyes fell shut. “You crash. Like a drug. The comedown is brutal. You ache everywhere. But it’s a good ache.
Like hard labor met a hangover and had a spiritual crisis. ”
She propped herself a little higher against my side, her hand now splayed across my chest like a shield and a balm all at once. Her thigh pressed fully over mine.
“That’s what a shift feels like. For Lycans anyway.
” I paused, then added, voice quieter, “Werewolves don’t get that luxury.
The moon owns them. Their change isn’t choice or free will.
It’s a sentence. They wake up covered in blood and regret.
We get to remember what we do. Doesn’t mean it’s clean. Just means we have to live with it.”
Blanche’s gaze softened. “That sounds…awful.”
I nodded once. “My first shift was when I was thirteen. My father didn’t believe in coddling. He took me out to the woods, chained me to a pine, and said, ‘You fight it, or you feed it. Either way, you learn.’”
Her eyes widened slightly.
“He came back the next morning. Found the tree half-ripped out of the ground. Blood on my hands. I’d bitten through my own tongue. He was proud.”
“Jonathan…” she whispered, voice breaking.
I shook my head. “He taught me to master it. Not to understand it. Definitely not to accept it. That was weakness.”
Silence stretched again. I felt her toes brush lightly against my calf. A small gesture, but deliberate. She was still here. Still touching me. But then her hand moved, fingers threading into mine.
“I was scared, to answer your question,” she admitted softly. “But not of you.”
I looked at her sharply.
“I was scared of myself. Of how easy it was to trust you. To want you so fully.” She drew in a breath. “But tonight…you didn’t lose control. You could’ve. You should’ve. But you didn’t.” Blanche touched my chest, palm against my heart. “You chose me. Even then.”
I blinked hard. My throat was dry. “You should’ve run,” I told her.
She looked at me like she already had the answer. “But I didn’t. I didn’t want to.”
Something inside me cracked then.
I’d always feared being seen like this. Truly seen. And not turned from in horror, but held like I was still worth something. That was the cruelest kindness. The one I never knew how to live with.
“Maybe the thing I’m most afraid of,” I said quietly, “isn’t the monster. It’s what I lose when I become it. And what I might never get back.”
She leaned in, kissed my shoulder, then pressed her cheek against it. “Does it ever get easier?” she asked.
“No,” I said honestly. “But maybe with you…the fear doesn’t win every time.”
Her body folded into mine like we’d done this before, like we already knew the shape of each other and our forms were just getting reacquainted.
We lay like that for a long time. Breathing. Listening to the wind move through the trees above us, the scent of moss and pine all around.
I didn’t feel like a monster anymore. Not in this moment.
Just a man.
And for the first time in a long while…I wasn’t alone.