Chapter Nineteen
Connor
Night had finally settled around Glengáill.
Soft and watchful, the edges of the forest breathing in slow, even draughts of cold air.
Inside The Dry Pig, the murmurs of frightened townsfolk had faded to nothing more than a tired hush.
Irial slept at last. Connor had Max and Fraser stay behind to help Piper and Moira tidy the shaken community.
Connor stepped outside first, needing space. The lantern at the edge of the square flickered in the breeze, its thin pool of light haloing the stones. He braced his hands against the railing, exhaling a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding since Irial’s rescue.
Behind him he heard footsteps. Soft. Measured. Adrian.
Connor didn’t turn, but he felt the bond tug gently. An awareness, warm and quiet, like someone brushing the edge of his thoughts.
Adrian came to stand beside him, leaving enough distance to be polite, yet close enough that Connor could feel his presence like a second pulse. “She’s safe,” Adrian said softly, as though repeating it might make it more real.
“Aye,” Connor replied. “But it was too damn close.”
Adrian’s breath curled in the cold, pale against the dark. “When I saw her there, when I felt that thing’s presence I…” He stopped.
“You thought we’d lost her,” Connor finished for him.
Adrian nodded. “And I couldn’t bear it.”
They stood in silence for a moment, listening to the forest shift: a soft creak of branches, the low rustle of distant wind. Nothing unnatural. Nothing warped or off kilter.
“Do you ever wonder,” Adrian asked, “why the bond shows us each other’s fear more clearly than our own?”
Connor shook his head. “I don’t pretend to understand it. But aye. I felt your fear tonight. Stronger than mine.”
Adrian let out a faint laugh. “That’s unfortunate. I try to hide it.”
“You can’t.” Connor’s tone was rough, but not unkind. “Not from me.”
Adrian looked away, his gaze dropping to the lantern-lit stones. “I wasn’t afraid for myself.”
Connor’s heart gave an unhelpful, traitorous thud. “Adrian.”
Adrian lifted his eyes, too open, too honest, the green catching the cold firelight. “I thought the bond was meant to make us stronger. But it’s complicated, isn’t it?”
“Aye,” Connor murmured. “Complicated’s one word.”
“Is it unwelcome?”
Connor’s jaw tightened, not from anger, but from the effort of finding words that didn’t betray too much. He shifted his weight, his fingers curling around the railing. “It’s not unwelcome,” he said finally, his voice low. “Just unexpected.”
Adrian’s shoulders eased. “Good.”
Connor shot him a sideways look. “Why’s that good?”
“Because I don’t want to fight this alone,” he said. “Any of it.”
Connor’s breath misted in the air, thin and quiet. “You’re not alone.”
“And you?” Adrian asked. “Are you?”
Connor turned his face skyward. The stars were pale behind a drifting cloud. He wasn’t used to answering such questions, or to being asked them. “No,” he said at last. “Not anymore.”
The wind swept a curl of Adrian’s hair across his forehead, and something inside Connor eased a fraction, like a knot loosening. The bond pulsed again, soft and warm, but not demanding, simply acknowledging what it was between them.
Adrian smiled, small, real, and tired. “We should get some rest,” he said gently. “Tomorrow will bring more questions.”
“Aye.” Connor pushed off the railing. “But we’ll face them.”
“Together?” Adrian asked.
Connor hesitated only a heartbeat. “Aye. Together.”
Their gazes met briefly, quietly, and the night didn’t crackle or whisper or shift. It simply held them. Side by side. Connected.
“I need to shift,” Connor muttered. “Fancy a run?”
Adrian grinned. “I thought you’d never ask.”
The sky was filled with deep purples spreading across the horizon like spilled ink. Frost clung to the heather fields, catching the weak glow of the dying sun. The air tasted sharp and metallic the way it sometimes did before the Veil shivered.
Connor stood at the edge of the clearing, his shoulders tense beneath the weight he’d been carrying for days. The wolf in him paced under his skin, restless, sensing what was coming long before his human mind caught up.
Adrian stepped beside him, his breath misting in the cold. “It’s louder tonight,” he murmured.
Connor didn’t need to ask what “it” meant. He felt it too. The pull, the bond, the unseen pressure tugging at the space between them.
“It’s getting harder to ignore,” Connor admitted. He rubbed his chest, wincing at the itch. Adrian placed his hand over Connor’s.
“We’re a right couple, aren’t we?” His laugh was soft, strained. “Trying to be someone the fates always thought we’d be and not understanding much of it.”
Connor snorted. “I’ve never been so damned confused in all my life.”
Wind swept across the glen, rolling over them in a cold wave. The wolves within them recognised each other. Connor exhaled, long and steady. “We need to shift. Together. See if that changes anything.”
Adrian’s brows lifted, surprise flickering for a moment, then acceptance. “All right,” he said quietly. “On your lead.”
They stepped farther into the clearing. For a heartbeat, they simply breathed. The dusk around them, the earth beneath them, the strange thread humming like a live wire between rib and bone evident.
Connor let go. The shift hit him like a rush of heat and instinct, bones moving with remembered precision, skin tightening, fur bursting through. The world sharpened, scents blooming like a thousand unfurling branches. The wolf filled him.
When he lifted his head, Adrian’s wolf stood a few feet away, sleek, dark, and amber-eyed. Smaller than Connor, but fast, alert, radiating tension and something sharper beneath it. Something like recognition.
The thread between them thrummed clearer now, as if shifting peeled away whatever fog dulled it in human form. Adrian’s wolf stepped closer.
Connor’s hackles lifted, not in warning but in instinctive awareness, as if some old memory had stirred, reminding him that wolves were not meant to stand alone.
A low thrum pulsed through the clearing.
Adrian pricked an ear, responding to something Connor felt down to the bone, the bond settling deeper, adjusting, aligning.
The earth beneath them seemed to vibrate.
Adrian’s wolf moved first, circling Connor carefully, keeping a respectful distance but refusing to break eye contact. Connor answered with a slow, deliberate turn of his own. A silent exchange, cautious but not unfriendly.
Their circles closed, inch by inch. When their shoulders finally brushed fur against fur, the bond pulsed so sharply Connor froze, his claws digging into the frosty soil. Adrian froze too.
A deep sound rolled through Connor’s chest. Not a growl but a recognition he hadn’t allowed himself to name. Adrian answered with a quiet, steady sound of his own.
And for the first time since the mark awoke, the thread between them eased, no longer pulling or demanding, simply settling, warm and steady.
Two wolves stood together in the rising dark.
The sky above them shivered like the Veil itself had taken notice.