Chapter Six #2
“With you? Statistically, yes.” He put the lollipop between his teeth, letting it click loud against the molar. “You here to audit my parenting technique, or you just like watching me work?”
“Both.”
He considered, then shrugged. “Fair.”
The city outside pulsed brighter now, the rain easing up, the river glassy and black. Inside, the air had a tension to it, the kind that builds in a fire team right before the breach.
I catalogued his posture: loose but ready, the muscle in his jaw flexed to keep from saying what he was thinking. The scent off his skin was fresh, and beneath it, the high, sweet trace of cherry blossom, more pronounced in the warmth of the apartment.
He rolled the sucker with his tongue and said, “You going to ask, or should I just start narrating?”
“Start,” I said.
He took a breath, prepping himself. “You want to know about the wolf thing, or the military thing?”
I let a microsecond pass, then said, “Whichever one you think matters more.”
He grinned, quick and sharp, like he’d won something. “All right.” He pulled the lollipop from his mouth and let it rest on the wrapper. “Military’s easy. Seven years Army. Last three with 75th Ranger Regiment. Got out because I was tired of letting other people decide if I was worth the oxygen.”
“Your record’s exceptional,” I said, and meant it. “No black marks.”
He rolled his eyes. “That’s because they stopped caring about black marks when Don’t Ask Don’t Tell ended. They just made your life miserable until you did the paperwork for them.”
He said it like he’d rehearsed the line, but there was an old bruise under the words. I could see the outline of it: the years of silence, the camouflage of jokes and hard work, the math of surviving a system built for someone else.
I waited for the rest.
He let it come. “I’m gay. In case you missed it in the paperwork.”
I held his gaze. “I noticed.”
He nodded. “I got good at being the exception. Got better at leaving before anyone decided it was their business.”
“You left. Not discharged.” I’d read the file twice, but I wanted to see his face when I said it.
“Yeah,” he said. “Figured I’d try doing something I could actually stand to wake up for.” He looked out the window, city lights painting his face in warped geometry. “I like writing. I like being left alone. Apartment above the bakery, rent paid in advance. That’s it.”
“Gay romance novels,” I said. I made it neutral, not a question, just a statement of fact.
He watched me, close, waiting for the punchline or the judgment. When neither came, he shrugged. “Somebody’s got to do it.”
“Do you like it?” I asked.
He hesitated, for the first time. “Yeah. I like it.” The edge on his voice softened, just a fraction. “I like writing something that might actually help someone.”
I nodded. It made sense. “You don’t strike me as sentimental.”
“Not sentimental,” he agreed. “Just practical. People are dumb. But sometimes they get a thing right.”
He spun the lollipop in his hand, not meeting my eyes. The silence stretched, not uncomfortable, just measured.
“You’re good with Grace,” I said.
He barked a laugh. “She’s easier than most people. She doesn’t lie.”
I let the conversation slide into the next register. “You want to talk about her shift?”
He shrugged. “What’s there to say? She went full wolf on my duvet. Didn’t eat me, so I figured it was fine.”
“Most pups can’t shift at that age,” I said. “Not on purpose, not on accident.”
He looked at me. “You worried about her, or about what it means?”
“Both.” I wanted to touch him.
Didn’t.
“You got theories?”
“I have three,” I said. “One, she’s a throwback. Some packs produced shifters like that, before the culls. Two, she’s a hybrid with something else. Or three, she’s unique.”
He considered it. “What’s your guess?”
“Unique,” I said, flat.
He smiled, for real this time. “I like that one better, too.”
There was a warmth building in my chest that had nothing to do with the scotch or the ambient temperature. The longer I watched him, the more it felt like the world was narrowing down to just the two of us, one neon-lit island in a city of sleepwalkers.
He caught me staring. “What?”
“Nothing,” I said, and meant it.
He smirked. “You’re not subtle.”
“Neither are you,” I said.
He grinned. “I know.”
We were quiet for a long stretch, just listening to the hum of the city and the sound of Grace’s tiny, rhythmic breaths as she slept. I could tell he was thinking, winding up for the next round.
He delivered it dead-on. “You want to know what it was like, the first time she shifted?”
I nodded because I did.
He thought about it, then said, “It wasn’t scary. It was just… new. I spent the first thirty seconds waiting to see if she’d bite. She didn’t. I was ready to google ‘baby wolf care’ before I remembered she was a baby again twenty seconds before.”
He laughed, but it wasn’t at himself. It was at the absurdity of the whole project.
I said, “Did you ever think about running?”
“Why?” he said, honest confusion. “She needed me. You needed her not to die. Problem, solution. I was more worried about getting formula out of the sheets.”
“You weren’t afraid.”
He shook his head. “I don’t do afraid. I do next move.” He looked at me, eyes almost lazy. “Most humans would have run.”
“Most humans haven’t cleared buildings in Kandahar,” I said. It was the highest compliment I knew how to give.
He shrugged. “Most humans don’t know what they’re capable of until they’re in it.”
I let my eyes close, just for a second, then opened them. “What did you want, growing up?”
He caught the swerve in topic but rolled with it. “I wanted to be left alone,” he said. “Then I wanted to make a difference. Turns out you can’t do both.”
He waited for me to ask the next thing, but I didn’t. I could feel the conversation circling something important.
He asked, “You ever wish you could turn it off?”
“What?”
“The wolf thing. The extra sense. The knowing when people are scared or lying or pissed at you.”
I didn’t have to think about it. “No. It’s the only way I can tell if people are worth the time.”
He nodded, like that made sense. “Is it ever exhausting?”
“Less than the alternative,” I said. “Navigating the world without it is like flying blind. I don’t know how you do it.”
He let that land. “Maybe we don’t. Maybe we just get good at pretending.” He set the lollipop down, unwrapped now, the surface shiny and wet. He watched me, waiting for a cue.
I gave it to him. “Go ahead, ask.”
“Are ruts real?”
“They are,” I replied.
Jai didn’t say anything, but I could see the wheels turning in his head. They were practically leaving tire marks.
“You want to know about the rut, don’t you?”
He grinned, wide and wolfish. “You don’t have to answer.”
“I will,” I said.
He listened, intent.
“It’s manageable,” I started, then stopped.
“That’s the company line. What it is, is a fever.
It starts in the back of the head and works its way into your spine.
You get hot, and then you get restless. Judgment goes.
Patience goes. You get so wound up in your own skin that everything else becomes secondary. ”
He nodded. “How do you manage it?”
“Suppressants,” I said. “Isolation. Two or three days, every month.”
He watched my face. “And now?”
“Now,” I said, holding his gaze, “it’s less generalized. More focused.”
He looked away, which was rare for him. “Complicated.”
I let the silence sit.
He broke it, but softer. “What happens if you don’t manage it?”
“Depends on the wolf. Some get violent. Some get reckless. Some just break down.”
He considered that, then asked, “What happens if you lose your mate?”
I let the words settle, the weight of them. “You survive,” I said. “Mostly. But the bond never closes. It’s like a wound that doesn’t heal. You carry it.”
He watched me, face more open than I’d ever seen it.
I added, “It won’t happen to me. I won’t allow it.”
He laughed, low and close. “That’s a bold claim.”
I looked at him, honest and unguarded. “I’m a practical man. I protect what’s mine.”
He rolled his eyes. “We’re going to have to talk about the ‘mine’ thing at some point.”
“Not tonight,” I said.
He nodded, a small, almost invisible movement. “Not tonight.”
We sat, not talking, for a minute. Just breathing in the same room, two men who’d never asked for this and didn’t know what to do with it now that it had shown up.
He took a deep breath, then stood, holding Grace close to his chest. “I should sleep, or I’ll be useless in the morning.”
I stood too, not wanting to leave it on a weird note.
He looked at me, really looked, and there was no challenge in it—just a quiet, stubborn certainty. He said, “You’re not what I expected.”
“Neither are you,” I replied.
He nodded, as if that settled something.
Grace’s entire body weighed less than one of my hands, but Jai held her with the kind of care reserved for ancient artifacts or unexploded ordnance.
Her mouth hung open, the tiniest pink oval, her lips shiny with formula and sleep.
One fist curled, instinctive, against the pulse at the base of Jai’s throat.
He looked down at her for a long moment. Then he looked at me. The set of his jaw said reluctant, but the rest of him—shoulders sloped, weight balanced forward—said settled.
“I should put her down,” he said.
I nodded, and followed him into the hall. The penthouse was all edge and hush, the only light coming from the small, square fixtures set at floor level every third meter.
They threw a blue-white arc against the walls, rendering every surface at half-contrast, just enough to keep from breaking your toes but not enough to betray a location to the outside.
Jai padded ahead, silent except for the whisper of socks on tile, and stopped at the guest suite. I took up position at the threshold, one arm braced to the frame, not moving.