Chapter 38
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CALDER
I awoke with Milo Hart pressed along my side.
For a moment, I did not move.
I stayed where I was, aware of the full weight of him against me, the heat of his body seeping through my fur, the slow, even rhythm of his breathing where his face rested close to my shoulder.
My own breath had eased sometime in the night.
The pain was still there, deep and present, but no longer sharp enough to pull me under.
That was enough to tell me the healing had fully taken hold. Not complete, but steady now.
Milo’s arm remained draped across me, firm with sleep instead of loose carelessness. He had chosen this position sometime during the night and never let it go.
He had stayed like that through the night.
Through the blood and through the hours where my body had puzzled its way back together. Through every moment where it would have been easier for him to pull away.
He had not.
I lowered my head slightly, breathing in his scent and tucking it safely in my awareness beside every other instinct that recognized him as mine.
Mine.
The thought came easily now.
It did not need to be argued with.
I moved carefully, testing my weight without fully disturbing him.
Sleep still clung heavily to him, but he reacted instinctively all the same, fingers pressing more firmly against my side the moment I moved. “I’m not leaving,” he murmured, voice rough with sleep, barely formed.
I did not answer him.
I did not need to.
I moved again, easing myself up inch by inch so I would not tear what had already begun to mend.
He awoke properly this time. I felt the change in him immediately. Sleep fell away beneath sudden concern as he pushed himself upright beside me, his arm slipping from where it had rested across my chest only long enough for him to reach back toward the wound.
“Hey—hey, wait,” he said, pushing himself up beside me. “Don’t just get up like that.”
His hands were on me before I could answer, straight to my side, fingers pressing carefully along the damaged skin, tracing the length of the wound with complete concentration.
“Hold still,” he demanded, quieter now, more controlled. “Let me see it.”
I stayed where I was, not because I required the instruction, but because the focus in his voice made it clear he needed this reassurance as much as I needed the treatment.
His touch moved slowly over the injury, adjusting pressure with growing confidence as he examined the places where the flesh had already begun pulling itself back together.
“It’s closing,” he muttered, more to himself than to me. “It’s actually—” He stopped, then leaned closer, eyes narrowing as he looked again. His hand flattened briefly against my side. “Does it still hurt?”
“Yes.”
“How bad.”
I considered it. “Less than it did.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It is the correct one.”
That earned me a look.
Then a small shake of his head, like he already knew arguing with me would go nowhere.
“Of course it is,” he said. “Fine. Stay still.”
I had no desire to move yet anyway. Weakness still lingered beneath the healing, but more than that, I found myself unwilling to leave the quiet focus of his attention while it remained fixed entirely on me.
He kept working at it.
Not with skill learned from training, but with instinct and attention, adjusting his hands as he went, watching my reactions and learning what pressure I allowed and what I did not.
After a brief glance around the hollow, Milo pushed himself upright and reached for the discarded shirt he had used the night before. The fabric was already ruined from blood and tearing, but he gathered it anyway before ripping off another strip.
“You’re not going anywhere yet,” he instructed.
“I am able to move.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
I held his gaze. He did not look away.
“I said ‘you’re not going anywhere yet,’” he repeated, his voice steady now in a way that made it clear he had already decided this for both of us.
I could have pushed back. I had done it before. It would have been simple to do it again.
I did not.
Instead, I adjusted my weight slightly, testing the strength in my body without stepping away from him.
I had known injury. I had known the slow pull of my body putting itself back together. I had known doing both without witness, without interruption, without anyone standing close enough to see where it failed and where it held.
I had not known this–someone watching and insisting, refusing to back down even when there was nothing left to fix.
Someone caring.
“You’re still hurt,” he observed.
“Yes.”
“But not like yesterday.”
“No.”
He nodded once, accepting that, though I could tell he did not like it. His fingers traced along the place where the tear had been, learning the shape of it the way someone would who intended to remember.
“Good,” he hushed, more to himself than to me.
His hand stayed there a moment longer, then slid higher, flattening against my chest. Then he leaned in and pressed his mouth against the side of my neck, firm and unhurried, like it was something he had already decided he would keep doing.
I went still under it.
He pulled back just enough to look at me, one corner of his mouth lifting. “You don’t get to do everything alone anymore.”
“I understand that.”
“Good,” he answered. “Because I mean it.”
We did not leave the den right away.
That was different.
My instinct would have been to rise, check the territory, move through the forest before the daylight fully arrived. Instead, I stayed where I was and let the moment stretch, aware of him beside me, aware of the way he kept touching me as if he needed to confirm I was still there.
He rose from the furs and stretched carefully, slower than he would have in the cabin while adjusting to the shape of the hollow around him.
It was not built for human movement, but he learned quickly where the ceiling lowered, where the stone rose unevenly beneath his feet, where he needed to brace a hand for balance.
By the time we emerged into the trees, the forest had brightened around us. The air carried the damp coolness of early spring, rich with wet earth and running water.
I led the way more slowly than I normally would have, aware of Milo following close behind.
He watched the ground carefully now, learning the safer paths through the trees instead of forcing his way through them blindly.
He stumbled once on a root hidden beneath leaves, caught himself against a nearby trunk, then continued without complaint.
When we reached the water, he stopped at the edge for a second, taking in the sound and the flow of the water, the cool air rising from it.
Then he crouched and dipped his hands in, then shivered. “Cold.”
“It is spring.”
“That’s not comforting,” he muttered, but he didn’t pull back. Instead, splashed water over his face, then pushed his hair back, breathing through his mouth to combat the chill.
I stepped into the stream. The water closed around my legs. I lowered myself further, letting the current run over my side. The place where the wound had been held firm under the pressure.
Behind me, I heard him move again.
“Wait,” he said, stepping carefully into the stream beside me. The temperature clearly shocked him at once from the way his body tensed, but he pushed through it until the water reached his knees.
Then he reached for me again.
He started at my shoulder first, rinsing carefully through the thicker fur where blood had dried closest to the wound. His hands moved slowly from there, working lower along my side with patient attention while the current carried the loosened blood downstream between us.
“You missed this.”
“I did not miss it.”
“You ignored it,” he corrected, already washing the remaining blood from beneath the fur along my ribs.
I let him.
When he finished with one side, he moved closer around me to reach the other, one hand steadying himself briefly against my shoulder while the other worked carefully through the fur along my back.
His movements slowed after a while. At one point he leaned forward, resting his forehead briefly against the side of my neck while his fingers continued moving through the water along my ribs.
“You’re going to start acting like none of this happened in about an hour, aren’t you?” he murmured.
“The healing is progressing.”
“That is not the same thing as being recovered.”
I looked toward him. “You are still concerned.”
“You got half your side shredded yesterday,” he said, pulling back just enough to look at me directly. “Yeah, Calder. I’m still concerned.”
I did not answer.
He stayed close anyway.
We remained in the stream until Milo finally seemed satisfied the blood had been washed completely from my fur. Only then did he return to the bank, shivering slightly despite trying not to show it while he dragged his hands through his wet hair.
I followed him out a moment later, and together we took shelter beneath the canopy of the forest where the floor had already begun warming beneath the morning light.
Food did not come from preparation.
It came from the land.
I moved through the trees, selecting what I knew was safe, what would hold him through the day. Berries first, the same variety we had eaten before. He watched my hand closely this time, following the movement rather than guessing.
“This one?” he asked, holding one up.
“That one is safe.”
He studied it like he was committing it to memory, then popped it into his mouth.
His expression shifted as he tasted it. “Okay,” he said after a second. “That’s better than the last one.”
“You chose the last one without asking.”
“I was optimistic. That was my mistake.”
I almost answered. Instead, I reached for another cluster and handed it to him.
He took it without hesitation.
We did not return to the hollow immediately. The stream ran close enough that we could still hear it behind us, and the open patch near the bank gave Milo room to move without scraping his head against stone or ducking beneath the low ceiling of my den.
I gathered what I knew was safe for him first—berries, roots, and the smaller things the land offered without requiring him to eat as I did.
The meat was different. I could have eaten it as it was. Milo could not. Or would not. For him, raw meat was not food yet. It had to be changed first.
By the time I returned, Milo had already begun gathering fallen branches near the stream bank, sorting through them with quick, practiced attention.
“I’m not eating anything raw,” he said without looking up.
“That is how it is normally consumed.”
“Not by me.” He tested one branch, discarded it, then reached for another. “Mrs. Alvarez taught me enough campfire cooking to know I am not dying of food poisoning in the woods with my cryptid boyfriend watching.”
I stilled at the word.
Boyfriend.
He did not notice what it did to me.
He kept working, building a small, contained fire between stones, careful with placement and dry kindling. The efficiency was different from mine, but it had its own certainty.
“You’re going to learn this,” he said once the flame finally caught. “But not because you need fire for yourself.”
“I do not.”
“I know.” He glanced up at me then, the corner of his mouth lifting slightly. “But I do. And if you’re going to keep feeding me things you drag out of the forest, you need to know how to make them edible for the fragile human in this relationship.”
Something about that rooted itself inside me.
Not the fire, or the cooking.
The assumption beneath it—that there would be other meals, other mornings, other times when what he needed would become something I learned.
“I can learn.”
His expression softened before he looked back at the fire. “Yeah. I know you can.”
We ate near the stream after that, not the same way, but not separate either.
He ate the berries as they were, cooked what needed cooking, and complained only twice about my definition of “edible.”
By the time we started back toward the hollow, the light through the trees had softened.
Milo walked close beside me.
I felt him glance my way more than once, like some part of him still needed reassurance that I remained standing beside him instead of bleeding out against the stone floor of the hollow.
Then suddenly, his hand closed around my arm.
Not to stop me, but to pull himself closer.
I turned toward him automatically, already feeling the uneven breath he released before he leaned up and kissed me.
It was brief, warm, and certain in a way that reached deeper than the embrace itself.
When he pulled back, his hand stayed against me for another second like he was reluctant to break the contact entirely.
“Just checking,” he murmured.
“For what?”
His eyes lifted fully to mine then, all humor gone beneath something quieter and far more honest. “That you’re still here.”
Finally, I understood exactly how close he thought he had come to losing me.
“I am,” I told him.
Milo held my gaze another second longer before finally nodding. “Good,” he said near silently.
But he did not let go of my arm again for the rest of the walk back to the hollow.