Chapter 10 - Hunter
The hot spring smells fresh and laced with the cold clarity of high elevation, and I’m sitting at the edge at seven in the morning because sleep stopped being an option around three.
The water moves slowly as steam lazily coils in the air, disappearing before it reaches the tree line. The world is quieter up here in a way that’s different from the quiet of the territory below, and while I should find it peaceful, I don’t.
The bond is different now, and completely undeniable.
It doesn’t matter how many wolves give you their opinion or tell you about their experience; nothing could have truly prepared me for it. Not the old accounts, or the mated pairs I’ve watched over the years.
Before, it was a frequency I could sometimes tune out, and a pull I could redirect with enough deliberate effort and distance.
Now it’s like someone has driven a stake into the center of my chest and has a line from it to wherever Tessa is.
The line doesn’t go slack regardless of how far she retreats, and right now, it’s pulling toward the cabin.
She hasn’t come out, and she was asleep when I got up, or was at least pretending to sleep with enough commitment that I decided to leave it alone. She’d taken the far side of the bed more like drawing a border, and she’d faced the wall while I’d lain in the dark listening to her breathe.
It was more than I expected from her, yet it left me feeling like I was exactly where I was supposed to be, but with no idea of what to do with it.
I’d relit the fire before I stepped outside so that she’d have heat when she woke up, and while it was a small thing, those are all I seem to have lately.
I stay outside for as long as I can, considering every path forward I have.
Regardless of the blooming bond between us, just waiting to be nurtured, Tessa can hardly stand to look at me. I can’t say I’m surprised, since I expected that, but it stings more than I care to admit.
Giving her space seems like the most obvious choice, but that requires suffocating every instinct I have shouting at me to claim her properly. To make her see and feel every way that I want her.
Still, I doubt she’d even let me try.
When I eventually go in, she’s sitting at the table with a mug of something hot and a book she found on the shelf near the window. Likely without meaning to, she looks up when I come through the door with a brief, assessing look, then back down at the page.
“Morning,” I say.
“Morning.”
The single word comes out as a mumble, and that’s all I get. That’s the whole conversation.
Changing out of the steam-damp clothes, I make my own coffee and stand at the kitchen counter. I watch as she reads and think about what my next move is with the same attention I used to give to operational planning. Though this seems far more complicated than anything I’ve dealt with before.
By noon, she’s moving from the table to the chair by the window with the same book but a different view. I’ve done two perimeter checks that weren’t required, split enough wood to last through a winter three times as long as the one coming, and reorganized the supply cabinet.
The cabin isn’t large enough to absorb this much tension, and it’s making me even more restless. I don’t know what to do with it, and by the looks of it, Tessa doesn’t plan to do anything at all.
“There’s a trail,” I begin from the kitchen, hoping it’ll be enough to catch her attention. “It runs north along the ridge and takes about an hour at a moderate pace. The views are…” I trail off, well aware that she isn’t even looking at me. “It’s worth seeing.”
Tessa turns a page, but doesn’t react. “Sounds nice.”
“I thought you might want to walk it.”
She looks up then, just enough not to seem completely detached. “I’m fine here.”
Something in me clenches up at the rejection, even if I’ve been preparing myself for it. “You’ve been inside all morning.”
“I’m aware of that.”
Turning back to the counter, I set down the cup I’ve been holding and take a breath. “I’m not trying to push you.”
“You’re talking to me when I’m clearly reading,” she says, keeping her voice calm enough not to be cruel, just more direct. “What would pushing look like?”
Unable to come up with an answer that doesn’t make me sound either defensive or pathetic, I say nothing. She goes back to her book, and I go back to the window to look out at the rocky cliffs and try to locate whatever patience I can.
I couldn’t care less about the trail or anything else we might find out in the woods. I just want some sort of bridge between us, and I want her to give me something to work with that might make all of this more bearable.
Dinner is the same, just as expected.
I cook because it gives me something to do and because she hasn’t moved toward the kitchen yet. Since one of us has to, I make something simple with rice, chicken, and some vegetables that were brought up before we came. It’s the kind of meal that doesn’t require much effort or commentary.
Tessa comes when I say it’s ready, which I count as a microscopic success, then we eat in near silence.
The dark sets in fast outside the windows, and the fire I rebuilt an hour ago is putting out enough heat to make the room feel smaller and more intimate than either of us seems to know what to do with.
After a long, agonizing stretch of silence, I try.
“How’s the book?”
“Fine.”
“What’s it about?”
She pauses, then murmurs, “A man making bad decisions.”
I look at her, and something in the set of her mouth suggests that description is a deliberate choice, and not a coincidence. Still, I bite anyway. “Is it any good?”
“That remains to be seen.”
Regardless of trying to get somewhere, she halts any progress, and I know it’s intentional. I can feel the tension between us making the space feel more precarious than it needs to be.
I put down my fork. “Tessa.”
“Hunter.”
“I’m trying,” I say flatly, unwilling to dress it up. “I know that doesn’t fix anything, and I’m not telling you it does, but I’m trying… and I’d like to talk to you.”
Her jaw clenches slightly, then she clears her throat. “We are talking.”
“We’re exchanging words without any meaning,” I mumble, looking at her across the table while receiving only a blank one in return. “There’s a difference, and you know it.”
“Then what would you like me to say?” she asks. For as direct as it is, the question is genuine, like she’s actually curious what I was hoping to get from her.
I take another careful breath. “Anything resembling an actual thought you’re having. You can be angry at me. Honestly, I’d rather you be angry at me out loud than continue this.”
She watches as I gesture at the space between us, and something moves in her face. “You’d rather I was angry.”
“Than this? Yes.”
Tessa looks at me for a long moment, then she picks up her fork again. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
And just like that, she continues eating with all the coolness in the world, as if none of this is eating away at her like it is for me.
***
I sit on the porch long after dinner wraps up, and everything is put away.
The cabin behind me has gone quiet again, and while I know for a fact that Tessa is still in there, it feels more like I’m completely alone here.
The sky is genuinely something this far up, and I’d forgotten it in the years I’ve been gone. The stars are out with an almost aggressive clarity, and I have the feeling Tessa would appreciate it more than anyone else, but she won’t even give it a chance.
My father used to bring me up here when I was a boy, and Cole would give us clearance to use the cabin. He’d find a week in the fall for just the two of us, and we’d fish in the streams, track wild game, and sit on this same porch in the cold night air.
For him, it was a chance to get away, and for the two of us to spend some time together. For me, those moments were everything.
I hadn’t thought about those trips in a while, but I’m thinking about them now. Then I think about Tessa’s parents.
The Collins had been afraid and out of options. They were caught between a threat and a pack that viewed them too lowly to feel like they could go to anyone for help.
It doesn’t make what happened unhappen, but that choice feels more human than the story the pack likes to tell. I spent long enough outside of the pack grounds navigating difficult situations to understand the difference between evil and being cornered.
Tessa was a kid at the time, just like I was.
She was so young and lost her parents in the same event that made her the pack’s designated liability, forced to start her life in a community that had already decided what she was before she could speak for herself.
And me… I have to own this. This responsibility has been mine to carry for quite some time, but I’m only now taking it on.
Even before I became the alpha, I had enough authority among my peers to have interrupted that pattern a long time ago. I should’ve said enough and used the pull I had to stop that torment from getting worse.
And yet, I maintained that deliberate distance, all because the bond made me uncomfortable. Facing it required something I wasn’t ready to spend, and now we’re both paying for it.
The invisible line in my chest tugs, steady and unyielding, and I eventually follow it back into the cabin.
She’s in bed again, lying there stiffly with that distinct border reinstated.
I lie down on my side and look at the ceiling while I listen to the silence outside, catching the wind through the high branches, the faint sound of the springs, and nothing else for miles, and I think about what it will take to get through the wall Tessa has put between us.
Force won’t work, and I know better than that.
But regardless of everything else, I’m a patient man at my core when the situation requires it, and Tessa will have to put her book down eventually.