2. Torin #2
Rhodes looks skeptical but doesn’t argue. He makes a note. “Fine. Torin continues monitoring the weather witch. Report back with findings.”
The meeting continues, but I’m barely listening.
The meeting ends. Most of the alphas file out, but Aslan lingers. So does Elio, settling deeper into his stone chair with the air of someone who has nowhere better to be.
Rhodes pauses at the door. “I suppose you’re all going to be inappropriate now.”
“Almost certainly.” Elio waves him off.
Rhodes sighs and leaves.
The room feels different without the formal structure—looser, more honest. Aslan stretches, rolling his shoulders, and the collar of his shirt shifts to reveal more of his claiming mark.
“So.” Elio’s gaze tracks to the mark with open curiosity. “How does it feel? Being claimed by a witch?”
“I claimed her too.” Aslan’s voice carries a warmth I’ve never heard from him before. “It’s mutual.”
“Obviously. I’m asking about the experience. The sensation.” Elio leans forward, genuinely curious beneath his usual smoothness. “Our grandmothers told stories about witch-shifter matings, but those were supposed to be myths.”
Aslan considers the question. His hand drifts to his mark—unconscious, protective.
“Like waking up.” He pauses, searching for words that seem inadequate. “After years of sleepwalking. Everything before felt muted. Distant. And she’s...” Another pause. “She’s the first thing that’s ever felt real.”
Something twists in my chest. Not envy. Just a very specific awareness of what I’ve been missing.
“That sounds like a medical condition.”
Elio laughs. “That sounds like poetry. Torin, you should write that down.”
My expression doesn’t change. “I’ll pass.”
I already did. Three days ago. Slightly different phrasing, but the same sentiment. Hidden in the journal in my bookcase where no one will ever find it.
“What about you?” Aslan’s attention shifts to me, tiger-focus pinning me in place. “Any prospects? The matchmakers have been circling you for years.”
“No.”
“Not interested, or not finding anyone?”
“Both.” I stand, signaling the end of this particular conversation. “Some of us aren’t meant for mates.”
Aslan’s face softens—sympathy mixed with disagreement. Or recognition.
“That’s what I thought too.” His voice goes quiet. “Until I wasn’t.”
My cabin is dark when I return. I don’t bother with lights.
Just sink into the chair by the cold fireplace and stare at nothing while my bear paces circles in my skull.
Why did you volunteer to continue?
The question has no good answer. Just the memory of my own voice cutting through the meeting before my mind had caught up and the way something in my chest had risen when Rhodes started framing her as a concern to be managed. A threat to be contained.
She’s not a threat. She’s struggling.
I know the difference. I’ve spent enough years watching the Network make that mistake about things it doesn’t understand.
Is that all it is?
My bear offers no answer. Just paces.
I should assign someone else. Return to my steady, predictable, empty existence and let Caius find a different volunteer. Someone whose reasons would make sense.
Instead, I reach for the journal hidden in a bookcase. One of seven hiding spots. I know it’s ridiculous. No one comes to my cabin. No one would find them.
But the idea of anyone reading what I write—seeing the soft, foolish, wanting parts of me that don’t fit with who I’m supposed to be—
I can’t.
The pen feels too small in my hand. It always does.
I write anyway.
The words are terrible. Simple and clumsy and nothing like the poetry I read in the books that line my walls. Real poets use metaphors, imagery, sophisticated techniques.
Dawn is creeping through my windows by the time I stop.
My hand cramps from gripping the pen too tight.
Two hours of sleep. Cold coffee. A bear who won’t stop rumbling about her.
I make it through my morning duties on autopilot.
Settle the property dispute between Garrick and his neighbor—a simple misunderstanding about boundary lines that should have been resolved weeks ago.
Help repair the eastern wall of the Sleuth Hall.
Accept three separate casseroles from bears who’ve decided I don’t feed myself properly.
The casseroles join the others in my cold storage. Bears show love through food. My entire community has been trying to love me for years.
She could fill it.
I shove the thought aside. Return to Moonthread Square as the afternoon light turns golden.
Monitoring. Assessment. Doing my job.
The curtains of Radiant Aura Studio are open. I see her inside, arranging crystals on a shelf, talking to them with animated gestures that make her silver-streaked hair swing.
She doesn’t see me. I stay in the shadows near the apothecary, watching without approaching.
Her aura shifts as I watch. Tension creeping into her shoulders. A small cloud forming near the ceiling again. She’s struggling—emotion, magic, both intertwined.
A pixie darts past her window, trailing sparkles. She startles, knocks over a display, and the cloud overhead releases a brief shower of rain.
She catches the falling crystals. Sets them right. Wipes rain from her face with frustrated efficiency.
She’s beautiful.
The thought ambushes me. I’ve noticed attractive people before—acknowledged beauty the way you’d acknowledge a sunset or a well-made building. Pleasant. Irrelevant.
This is different.
It’s not just that she’s beautiful. It’s the way she moves—quick and emphatic, like she’s having an ongoing argument with the world and winning. The way she talks to her crystals like they’re stubborn children.
And then, from somewhere below thought, the bear stops pacing.
He goes absolutely still.
Mate.
The word crashes through me. My heart stops. Actually stops, a full beat skipped, my entire body seizing with something ancient and undeniable. The world narrows to a single point—this small, storm-making witch who argues with crystals and rains on her own furniture.
Ours.
My human brain scrambled to catch up. My bear had already decided.
I can’t breathe. My bear, who has been restless for weeks without knowing why, settles into the certainty of it like a bear finding its den. Not triumph. Not urgency. Just absolute, irrefutable recognition.
This is what he’s been waiting for.
My human brain is considerably less sure.
She’s new to town. Struggling. The last thing she needs is some massive shifter following her around, claiming the mate pull gives him rights to her attention.