Chapter 24
Chapter twenty-four
The common room was quiet in the afternoon light.
Gray sat beside me on the worn couch, working through a puzzle book Neal had given him. His brow furrowed with concentration, lips moving silently as he worked out each answer. He'd come so far from the wolf who couldn't make eye contact, who sat in corners and flinched at shadows.
"This one's wrong," he said, pointing at a clue.
"What do you mean?"
"The answer they want is 'dawn.' But 'dusk' also fits." He looked up at me, something almost mischievous in his eyes. "Sloppy editing."
I laughed. "You're getting too smart for these puzzles."
"Maybe." He returned to the book, but he was smiling.
Movement at the edge of my vision.
I turned.
RJ stood in the doorway to his room.
He looked different than he had during the incident three weeks ago. Still thin, still wary, but something had shifted. The constant coiled tension had eased slightly. His eyes tracked the room—exits, threats, possibilities—but they lingered on me longer than they used to.
He didn't speak.
He just walked across the common room and sat down.
Not on a chair. Not at a safe distance.
On the floor. Near my feet. Close enough that his shoulder almost brushed my knee.
Gray went still beside me. The puzzle book forgotten.
I didn't move. Didn't speak. Just let the moment exist.
RJ pulled his knees up to his chest. Wrapped his arms around them. His eyes stayed fixed on the middle distance, but I felt him lean—just slightly, barely perceptibly—toward me.
"Lumi."
RJ's voice was rough. Unused to forming words. But it was there.
"Yeah?"
"The counting game. Stone told you about it."
"He mentioned it."
Silence. "I remembered the rest." His hands tightened on his knees. "After. In my room. I remembered the other wolves. The ones who didn't make it out."
This was what healing looked like.
Not dramatic breakthroughs or miraculous recoveries. Just moments. Small connections. Wolves who'd been shattered finding tiny pieces of themselves and carefully, painfully putting them back together.
The main door banged open.
"Alexandra, wait—"
A small blur of motion rocketed into the common room.
Alexandra.
She was supposed to be with Ash and Rae, who were visiting the Healing Center for a facilities review. But apparently, she'd escaped. Again.
"Lulu!" she shrieked, her face splitting into a grin.
I opened my arms, expecting her to barrel into me the way she always did.
She didn't.
She made a hard right turn and launched herself directly into RJ's lap.
Everyone froze.
Gray's puzzle book slipped from his fingers. The staff member by the door made an aborted movement forward. I felt my whole body go rigid with fear.
RJ had gone completely still. His eyes were wide, shocked, his arms hovering awkwardly at his sides like he had no idea what to do with them.
Alexandra, oblivious to the tension she'd created, settled herself comfortably against his chest.
"You're warm," she announced. "Daddy Ash is warm too but you're warmer."
RJ didn't move. Didn't breathe.
"I'm Alexandra," she continued, reaching up to pat his face with one chubby hand. "I'm three. How old are you?"
"I..." RJ's voice came out strangled. "I don't..."
"That's okay. Sometimes I forget too." She spotted the puzzle book on the floor and pointed. "Is that yours? I like puzzles. Mama says I'm too little for the hard ones but I'm not. I'm very smart."
"Alexandra!"
Ash appeared in the doorway, Rae right behind him. Both of them looked frazzled—and then terrified as they took in the scene.
Their daughter. In the lap of the most unstable feral in the program.
"Okay, sweetheart." Ash moved forward slowly, his voice carefully casual even as his eyes tracked every micro-expression on RJ's face. "Time to come back to Daddy. We need to—"
RJ growled. Low. Deep. A warning sound that made the staff member by the door reach for his radio.
Ash froze.
Alexandra did not. She twisted around in RJ's lap and thumped him on the head with her small fist.
"Bad wolfie," she said sternly. "No growling. That's rude."
The silence that followed was absolute.
RJ stared at her. This tiny human who had just scolded him like an errant puppy. His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. And then—impossibly—he laughed. It was rusty and broken, like a machine that hadn't been used in years. But it was a laugh. Real and genuine and utterly unexpected.
"Sorry," he managed. "I didn't mean to be rude."
"That's okay." Alexandra patted his cheek again, magnanimous in forgiveness. "You can make it up to me. Do you know any songs?"
"I... maybe. I think I might."
"Good. Sing me one."
RJ looked at me. Helpless. Lost. But underneath the confusion, there was something else. Something that looked almost like wonder.
"Go ahead," I said softly.
He cleared his throat. Hesitated. And then, in a voice barely above a whisper, he began to hum. A simple melody. Nothing fancy. But familiar somehow—like something half-remembered from a dream.
Alexandra settled against his chest and listened, her eyes drifting closed.
Ash and Rae stood frozen by the door, watching. I saw Rae's hand find Ash's, their fingers interlacing. The humming continued.
The song ended. Alexandra had fallen asleep, her small body rising and falling with RJ's breath.
"I can take her now," Ash said quietly. "If you want."
RJ looked down at the sleeping child in his arms. Something in his expression shifted. Softened.
"She's okay," he said. "For a minute. She's okay."
Rae caught my eye across the room. I saw the tears she was fighting back. The hope she was afraid to feel.
This was what the new academy was for. Not just treatment. Not just containment. Moments like this. Wolves finding their way back to something human.
I told my mates about it that night.
We'd gathered at Cole's cabin—all five of them sprawled across the living room in various states of relaxation. James had claimed the couch. Neal sat in the armchair with a book. Cal was on the floor, back against the wall. Stone had positioned himself by the window, watching the moon rise.
And Cole was beside me, his hand resting on my knee, thumb tracing absent patterns on my skin.
"She just climbed into his lap?" James asked, incredulous.
"Like it was nothing. Like he was just another person to sit on."
"Children don't have the same fear responses," Neal mused. "They haven't learned to be afraid of the things adults fear."
"She thumped him on the head," I said. "Called him a bad wolfie."
Stone actually smiled at that. "I would have paid to see his face."
"He laughed. First time anyone's heard him laugh since he arrived." I leaned into Cole's warmth. "And then he sang to her, well she requested he sing ad he actually hummed. A lullaby he remembered from his past."
The room was quiet for a moment.
"That's good," Cal said finally. "That's really good."
"It's a start." I looked around at them—these men who had become my pack, my family, my home. "There's still so much work to do. The academy, the expanded program, all of it. But today felt like proof that it's possible."
"Possible is all we need." James stretched, his joints cracking. "Everything else is just details."
Stone turned from the window. "Full moon tonight."
I felt it too. The pull in my blood, the restlessness in my bones. The wolf rising to the surface, eager to run.
"I haven't shifted since my very first time after my heat," I said.
"None of us have. Not properly." Cole's hand tightened on my knee. "We've been too focused on everything else."
"So let's focus on this." James stood, already pulling his shirt over his head. "Pack run. All of us. The way it's supposed to be."
We left the cabin and walked into the woods.
The moon hung full and bright above the trees, casting silver light across the forest floor. The air was cold and clean, carrying the scent of pine and earth and something wilder underneath.
My pack spread out around me. Five wolves in human form, waiting.
"Together?" I asked.
"Together," they answered.
The shift rolled through me like a wave.
The Omega nature that had awakened during the heat made this possible for me—the transition from human to wolf, the settling onto four legs, the heightened senses that expanded my awareness until I could feel every heartbeat in the clearing.
I opened my eyes.
My pack surrounded me.
Stone was the largest—dark gray fur, powerful build, gold eyes that caught the moonlight.
James was tawny and muscular, built for speed and power in equal measure.
Neal's wolf was leaner, more elegant, with intelligent eyes that missed nothing.
Cal was brown and solid, steady as always.
And Cole—Cole was black as midnight, his fur absorbing the light, his presence a shadow that somehow felt like safety.
I looked down at myself.
Silver. My fur was silver, catching the moonlight like mercury.
Stone threw back his head and howled.
The sound shattered the silence of the forest, rising up through the trees and into the sky. One by one, the others joined—five voices weaving together into something primal and ancient and utterly pack.
I added my own voice.
And then we ran.
The forest blurred around us. Pine needles soft under our paws. Cold air rushing past. The bonds between us singing with shared joy as we moved as one unit through the night. This was what it meant to be pack.
Not just the mating. Not just the bonds. This—running together under the full moon, wolves in perfect synchronization, connected in a way that transcended words.
We ran until the moon was high overhead. Until the last of the tension and stress and weight of the past months had burned away. Until there was nothing left but the pure pleasure of being alive and whole and together.
We ended up at the cabin. The shift back was just as smooth. One moment wolf, the next human—breathless and grinning at each other in the moonlight.