Chapter 2
Chapter two
The Healing Center was quieter than the rest of campus.
I felt the difference the moment I stepped through the doors—the hush that settled over everything, the way sound softened against pale walls and linoleum floors. Out there, the world was noise and movement and people who wanted things from me. In here, the air itself seemed to slow down.
The woman at the front desk looked up as I approached. Margaret. Gray hair pinned back, reading glasses on a chain around her neck.
"Miss Orlav." She nodded at my badge, already reaching for the sign-in sheet. "He's been calm today. Ate most of his breakfast."
"That's good." I signed my name, noted the time. The clipboard felt familiar in my hands now—the weight of it, the particular scratch of pen against paper. I'd done this so many times the motions had become automatic.
Three weeks ago, I'd been a student who didn't belong here. Now I had a badge and a schedule and a room at the end of the hall that staff referred to as "Orlav's station."
Rae's doing. All of it.
"Dr. Wilson is in the east wing," Margaret added. "If you need anything."
I wouldn't. But I nodded anyway and walked toward the residential corridor.
James stopped at the entrance to the wing.
This was our ritual now—the walk from class, the pause at the threshold, the moment where he let go and I went forward alone.
"I'll be in the library," he said. "Come find me when you're done?"
"It might be late."
"I know." His hand found mine, squeezed once. "Take your time."
He didn't ask to come with me. He'd learned, in these weeks, that some spaces were too small for three people. That what North needed from me wasn't something James could share or fix or fight.
It had been hard for him at first. I'd felt it through the bond—the frustration, the helplessness, the instinct to protect warring with the understanding that protection wasn't what was needed. He'd pushed against it. Then he'd accepted it. Now he just... waited.
"Thank you," I said.
James leaned in, pressed his forehead to mine. A grounding point. A reminder.
"Always," he said.
Then he stepped back, and I walked through the doors alone.
North was waiting when I entered his room.
Wolf. Always wolf. He'd been wolf for years before I found him—years of cold and hunger and the slow forgetting of everything human. The feral dark had taken the man and left only the animal, and that animal was all he knew how to be.
Except once.
I remembered it every time I saw him. That moment after the bond with Neal, the healing center doctor, had snapped into place, when something in North had cracked open and he'd shifted—bones screaming, skin stretching, the wolf shattering into a man who gasped for air like he was drowning. I longed to see that man again, blonde hair, he’d looked tall and thin, muscles straining in his arms. Shaggy hair and a beard covered his strong jaw.
I longed to close my arms around him and feel his arms hug me back.
He'd touched my face with hands that shook.
Tried to speak with a throat that had forgotten words.
Then the wolf had surged back, and he was gone again.
It hadn't happened since. I didn't know if it would ever happen again.
But I hoped. That was the terrible thing. I couldn't stop hoping.
"Hey," I said softly, closing the door behind me.
His head came up immediately. Golden eyes found mine, and the bond flooded warm—recognition, relief, something that felt almost like joy. He was on his feet before I'd taken two steps, crossing the room to meet me, pressing his nose into my palm like he needed to confirm I was real.
I let him. Stood still while he circled me once, twice, scenting the air, cataloging the places I'd been.
He could probably smell the cafeteria on my jacket.
The coffee smell from Tomlinson's lecture hall.
The particular staleness of academic buildings and the faint traces of other students who'd brushed past me in crowded hallways.
He could smell James, too. That always made him tense—just for a moment, a flicker of something territorial that he couldn't quite suppress. But it passed quickly now. The bond said pack, and he was learning to listen.
When he'd finished his inspection, he settled beside me, leaning his weight against my legs. Heavy. Warm. Solid in a way that made something in my chest loosen.
"I'm here," I said, threading my fingers through his fur. "I'm not going anywhere."
The bond hummed between us. Steady. Almost peaceful.
Almost.
I felt his emotions shift.
A ripple through the bond—something dark and uneasy, surfacing from wherever he kept it buried. North's body went rigid against my legs. His ears flattened. A low whine built in his throat, soft and involuntary.
He pulled away from me. Started pacing—tight circles, head low, movements jerky and wrong.
"North."
He didn't look at me. Kept moving, kept circling, like he was trying to outrun something he couldn't escape.
I'd seen this before. The guilt that lived in him, deeper than memory. He didn't know what he felt guilty about—the specifics were still buried, locked away in whatever part of his mind the feral years had consumed. But his body remembered. His instincts remembered.
He'd left something behind. Someone. And even though he couldn't name it, the weight of it was still there.
"It's okay," I said, keeping my voice low and even. "Whatever it is, it's okay."
He stopped pacing. Stood frozen in the middle of the room, eyes fixed on something I couldn't see.
Then, slowly, he came back to me. Pressed his head against my thigh. A soft, apologetic sound escaped his throat.
The bond translated what words couldn't. I felt his confusion, his shame, the desperate need for reassurance he didn't know how to ask for.
I knelt down. Took his face in my hands.
"You're safe," I said. "You're here. Whatever happened before—we'll figure it out. But not today. Today, you just have to be here."
His eyes met mine. Golden, searching, full of things he couldn't say.
I held his gaze until the tension drained out of him. Until his breathing steadied and his body relaxed and the bond settled back into something quieter.
Not healed. But okay. For now.
I felt Neal before I saw him.
The bond between us was different from the others—sharper, more complicated, wrapped in layers of resistance he'd built and I hadn't tried to tear down. It pulsed now at the edge of my awareness, a tight knot of controlled tension.
I looked up.
He was in the hallway, visible through the observation window. White coat, tablet in hand, attention fixed on something in the opposite direction. Professional. Distant. Every line of his body arranged to communicate that he wasn't looking at me.
He was, though. I felt it through the bond—the awareness, the effort it took to maintain the pretense.
Our eyes didn't meet. He didn't acknowledge me.
But the bond tightened anyway, uncomfortable and wanting in equal measure.
Then he turned and walked away, footsteps echoing down the corridor until they faded into silence.
I exhaled slowly.
Beside me, North made a soft sound. Curiosity, maybe. Or something else.
"It's complicated," I told him.
He didn't seem convinced.
The afternoon passed in pieces.
I did the work of my internship—took notes, checked charts, observed North's behavior with the clinical detachment Rae had taught me to fake.
But mostly I just sat with him. Let him lean against me while I read through me textbook.
Scratched behind his ears when he pushed his head into my lap.
Existed in the same space, breathing the same air, letting the bond do what words couldn't.
Somewhere in the third hour, I realized something had changed.
Not dramatically. But the quality of North's calm was different than it had been a week ago. Deeper. More stable. He wasn't just settled because I was there—he was settled because some part of him had remembered how to be settled.
The routine was working. The slow, patient accumulation of safe moments was building something in him that hadn't existed before.
Trust. Maybe.
Or the beginnings of it.
I thought about this morning. About leaving him to go to class. About the spike of anxiety through the bond when I'd walked away—and the way it had faded, slowly, as the hours passed. He'd survived my absence. He'd been calm when I returned.
That was new.
That was why I could do this at all—attend classes, eat meals, pretend to be a normal student. Because leaving him for a few hours no longer felt like abandonment. Because the bond held steady across the distance, a thread connecting us even when we weren't in the same room.
He was getting better.
Slowly. In increments too small to measure. But better.
And maybe—someday—the man who had touched my face with trembling hands would find his way back.
The light through the window had gone dim by the time I stood.
North's head came up immediately.
"I have to go," I said. "Dinner. Then sleep. The real kind, in an actual bed."
He didn't move. Just watched me with those golden eyes, and I felt the bond pull taut between us.
Stay.
The word wasn't spoken. Didn't need to be.
"I'll come back tomorrow," I said. "First thing after classes. I promise."
He rose slowly, reluctantly. Followed me as I gathered my things, my clipboard, my badge. Stayed close as I walked toward the door, his shoulder brushing my leg with every step.
At the threshold, I stopped.
He couldn't follow me past this point. The residential wing had boundaries—for his safety, for everyone's safety. He understood that, even if he didn't like it.
I knelt down. Took his face in my hands one more time.
"I'm coming back," I said. "You know that, right? I always come back."
He pressed his nose into my palm. Inhaled deeply, like he was memorizing my scent.
Then, slowly, he stepped back.
He was letting me go.
The bond ached with the effort it cost him. But he was doing it anyway.
"Good," I whispered. "That's good. I'll see you tomorrow."
I stood. Walked through the door. Didn't let myself look back until I'd reached the end of the corridor.
When I did, he was still there. Still watching. A dark shape in the doorway of his room, gold eyes tracking my every step.
The bond stretched between us—steady, present, shot through with something that felt almost like hope.
Healing had begun.
It wasn't complete. Might never be complete, not entirely. The man was still buried somewhere inside the wolf, and I didn't know if he'd ever find his way out again. Some wounds left scars that didn't fade. Some transformations couldn't be undone.
But he was calmer than yesterday. Calmer than the week before.
And once—just once—he'd been human again.
That had to mean something.
I lifted my hand. A small wave. A promise.
Then I turned and walked toward the exit, toward James waiting in the library and all the ordinary pieces of a life I was slowly learning to live again.
Behind me, North watched until I disappeared from view.