Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
FERAL
Istared at the door.
I was the alpha of an entire region of wolf packs. I’d stood in rooms with rivals who wanted me dead and walked out intact. I’d carried the weight of hundreds of wolves on decisions made alone.
And I’d just been outmaneuvered by an eight-ounce squirrel with matchmaking tendencies.
My wolf rumbled with satisfaction.
I didn’t ask what he was thinking. I already knew. The smug furball had probably been hoping for something like this for days. I was grateful my wolf and the squirrel couldn’t communicate, or Victoria and I would be in serious trouble.
I stood with my hand on the latch, weighing options.
I could climb over the side of the balcony. Scale down the tree trunk and enter through one of the lower openings. I could call to my staff with a howl. I could break the latch with one good kick.
None of them felt dignified, so I turned around.
Victoria had taken a seat on the cushioned bench, her hands folded in her lap. She studied the forest as if being locked on a balcony by a squirrel was a reasonable turn of events she’d incorporated into her evening.
I found this attractive, which was a problem I didn’t have time to examine.
My wolf had gone quiet in that particular way that meant he was watching and enjoying himself and had no intention of helping.
I moved to the railing and leaned my hip against it, arms crossed on my chest, facing the forest. I wasn’t pouting. I was simply not ready to sit down yet.
Victoria shifted on the bench, and I heard the fabric of her dress rustle, her soft breathing.
I’d always been aware of her every movement and sound. I’d told myself in the beginning it was instinct or territory-sense. An alertness around something unfamiliar.
I’d stopped telling myself that not long after the wedding.
The bond hummed low and content between us, the way it did when we were close. I’d learned to stop fighting that particular sensation as well. It cost too much energy and won me nothing.
“He really is very good at this,” Victoria said in a soft voice.
Turning, I sat, keeping a reasonable distance between us. An appropriate distance for two people who were married and had kissed once and were now locked on a balcony by a scheming rodent.
Better, my wolf said.
I ignored him.
Silence settled over us, though it wasn’t uncomfortable. That was the thing that got me. Silence with Victoria had stopped being something I filled with growling or work or excuses to leave. It had become something I sat inside without feeling the need to fix it.
I didn’t know when that had happened. Maybe by day two.
The forest spread out below us, darkening as the last light faded. Distant howls echoed through the trees. My pack, calling to each other in the night.
“What did it feel like?” I asked.
The words came out before I’d decided to speak them, drawn out of me by the dark and the distance from everything that made honesty feel less dangerous.
Victoria turned to look at me. “What in particular?”
“The first time you made something in your laboratory that actually worked. What was that moment like?”
I didn’t fully understand why I’d asked. My wolf did, but my wolf had been untrustworthy since I met my wife.
She was quiet for a moment, her head tilting in a way that meant she was thinking through how to answer.
“I was twelve,” she said. “I’d been trying to synthesize a healing compound for weeks.
Everything kept exploding or turning colors it shouldn’t or just sitting there doing nothing.
” Her hands lifted, arranging invisible components in the air between us.
“Then one morning, I mixed the elements in a different order, and it worked. Just like that. The compound stabilized and the color changed to exactly what it was supposed to be.”
She paused, blinking slowly.
“I ran to show my grandmother. I was shaking so hard I nearly dropped the vial. Elizabeth looked at it and said, “Yes, that’s right, like she’d always known it was coming.
” A small smile crossed her face. “It felt like discovering I’d been speaking a language incorrectly my whole life and finally getting the pronunciation right. ”
I’d noticed she watched her hands move when she talked about things she loved. She didn’t appear to notice she did this. Small gestures, precise and careful, like she was still arranging data.
My father had spoken about finding a mate the same way Victoria spoke about her laboratory. “You’ll know,” he’d said, “because you’ll want to hear everything they say, even the parts that don’t make sense.”
I’d been fourteen and hadn’t understood.
I did now.
“What about you?” Victoria asked, lowering her hands to her thighs. “What did it feel like the first time you ran your territory as alpha? Not the political weight of it. The physical thing. The actual moment.”
No one had ever asked me that.
I looked out at the forest, at the canopy spreading in waves around us.
“I was nineteen,” I said. “Terrified. I’d been alpha for three days, and I didn’t know what I was doing. My father’s advisors kept giving me conflicting information about border protocols, and I couldn’t tell who to trust.”
The memory sat heavy inside me, making it a challenge to breathe.
“I shifted and ran along the border,” I said.
“All by myself. I ran for hours, following the markers my father had shown me when I was young. And somewhere around the eastern ridge, a part of me settled.” I paused, searching for words but everything felt inadequate.
“Like the land recognized me even if I didn’t recognize myself yet.
Like I was finally enough for this at least, even when I wasn’t sure I was enough for anything else. ”
I didn’t usually say things like that out loud. I didn’t know what to do with the fact that I had.
Victoria nodded, like she understood the parts I hadn’t said.
Which was somehow worse. Or better. I’d stopped being sure there was a difference by day three.
The temperature had dropped. The canopy held the cold air after dark, and the balcony caught the wind. Victoria crossed her arms over her chest and her skin prickled. She didn’t say anything about being chilly because she wouldn’t.
I noticed first. My wolf took note a breath after that.
Every instinct I had was oriented toward her comfort, and I’d stopped trying to argue with that instinct by day four.
I didn’t say anything. I simply moved closer and put my arm around her, pulling her against my side.
She went still.
I waited.
She didn’t pull away.
After a moment, so small I almost missed it, she leaned in.
The wolf made a sound I couldn’t define. If pressed, I’d say he was unbearably pleased.
She fit against my side in a way that made the parts of me that were always loud go quiet.
I looked at the forest. She looked at the forest. Neither of us acknowledged what was happening.
I’d run this territory for thirteen years. I’d negotiated with alphas who wanted me dead. Held borders that tried to fracture. And made decisions that kept hundreds of wolves safe.
None of it had ever made me feel as settled as sitting with this woman did.
How could I find the words to tell her something like that?
Victoria tipped her head back to look at the sky.
“That’s the Hunter’s Moon constellation,” she said, pointing. “The three bright stars form the belt, and the fainter ones around them create the bow. Sailors use it for navigation in the northern waters because it stays fixed relative to the pole star.”
She traced another pattern in the air.
“And that one is the Healer’s Hand. Five stars arranged like fingers reaching. It rises in spring and sets in autumn, which makes it useful for tracking the growing seasons.”
She kept talking, naming constellations and explaining the navigational logic of each one. She wasn’t trying to be charming. She just found it interesting, and she must realize I did too.
I let her talk. I watched the side of her face, particularly the small scar at the edge of her jaw, thin and old. An experiment gone sideways, probably.
She smelled different at night than during the day. Softer. Less like the laboratory. More like herself.
She folded her hands on her lap. I’d started to read her hands the way she read everything else. When they moved, she was engaged. When they were still, she was either at peace or working on her next challenge.
I liked that they were still now because it meant she was at peace while sitting beside me.
I wanted her to always be at peace, though I didn’t examine what that meant. I’d do that later, alone, like a reasonable person who didn’t want to sit with feelings on a locked balcony.
A natural lull fell over our conversation. The forest settled into its night sounds around us. Victoria went quiet, watching the canopy sway.
“I’m glad it was you,” I said. Too few words that meant everything buried deep inside me.
Something about the dark brought out my vulnerabilities. That and the fact that she was warm against my side. I enjoyed talking with her, especially when both of us said true things without the armor we usually wore.
It was hard to express my feelings about the marriage and the fact that she’d walked into my father’s unused office and claimed it without flinching.
She’d brought us yarrow extract and asked how patrol went and didn’t shrink from Bastian.
She’d learned my pack members’ names and came here and made this place feel, unexpectedly, like somewhere worth coming home to.
I’d thought our arrangement would be something to endure.
I was wrong.
Victoria stayed quiet for a moment. I didn’t look at her but at the forest.
“Me too,” she finally said.
Two words. I didn’t need more.
My wolf remained silent, his equivalent of reverence.
The parts of me that had been braced since I was nineteen years old, suddenly alpha, and entirely alone, loosened by one degree.
Some might say it was dangerous to let myself relax, but I didn’t care.
I stopped thinking and sat there with my wife in the dark and let this be what it was.
Behind us, the latch lifted, and the door swung open a crack.
Small paws retreated across the floor, heading for the sofa, followed by the sound of a squirrel settling down to sleep with a heavy sigh.
That rodent was the most effective political operative I’d ever encountered, though I’d never tell him.
I stood and offered Victoria my hand, grateful when she took it.
I pulled her up and held it for three steps, until we were through the door.
I didn’t know if she noticed.
She noticed, my wolf said.
The suite was dark except for the low burn of the fire. Inside our bedroom, Victoria walked into the bathing chamber. Water ran and clothing rustled.
I banked the fire and moved around the space, doing the things I did before sleep.
She came out of the bathing chamber and I went in, spending more time grooming than I ever had before. I felt almost nervous, which was ridiculous.
When I came to bed wearing only a simple loincloth, there were no pillows arranged down the center of the mattress.
She lay on her side, facing the windows. Still awake. Her breathing wasn’t sleep-breathing. I could sense the difference.
I got in instead of leaving the bedroom to go to the sitting area where I’d spent every night since she’d arrived, pretending to read.
With a soft sigh, I settled on my back and stared at the ceiling, watching shadows chase each other through the gloom.
I waited to see what she’d do, but she didn’t do anything. She didn’t move away or make a point of the space between us or reach for a pillow to stuff into the tiny gap.
After a few minutes, she eased closer. She didn’t drape herself over me in the way she had when she slept, just got close enough that her warmth teased along my side.
Something about the fact that this wasn’t accidental but both of us awake and deciding, hit me behind my sternum and didn’t leave.
I turned on my side to face her, very glad she didn’t move away.
I slid my arm around her waist. Took my time to give her the chance to slide back.
She put her hand on my chest, and it was all I could do to breathe.
She fell asleep first. I felt the exact moment it happened. Her breathing slowed and deepened, the last small tension in her shoulders releasing as she settled into me.
I lay still for a while, not trying to sleep, just present in the way my wolf was always present when I roamed my territory. Aware of every small thing. Noting it. Filing it away.
The scent of her hair. The weight of her hand on my chest. The fact that the suite smelled like both of us now in a way that was different. Two people occupying the same space. Now the area felt more like one thing instead of two.
I thought about what she’d said about the healing spell that worked. Perhaps I’d also been speaking a language wrong my whole life. Only now did it all make sense.
I thought about my father, but not in the usual way, with grief pressing down. I thought about him simply, a man who ran this territory and loved his pack and planned to teach his son things he ran out of time to teach.
The little wolf I’d carved when I was ten had sat in that drawer for thirteen years. She’d moved it to the shelf, somewhere it could be seen. I didn’t know how to explain what that had done to me.
Victoria would’ve liked my father, and he would’ve liked her.
I liked her. If I was being honest with myself, I could admit it. Yet it was more than that. It had been more than that for longer than I’d ever admit.
I was falling in love with my wife.
The feelings reminded me of the way I’d felt the first time I ran the borders as alpha. Like I was finally being recognized by someone that already knew me.
My wolf said nothing, but I suspected my wolf was already asleep.
I closed my eyes. Pressed my face into her hair.
The thought surfaced again: I’m glad it was you.
Sleep claimed me.