Chapter 5 #2
"He did it because something in him decided that the risk was worth it. The risk has been worth it for three years. He has had opportunities. He did not take them. He took this one. The variable that changed was you."
"Jo. I have known him for three days."
"And he has been waiting for someone like you for three years.
I don't know if you're going to stay. I'm not asking you to.
I'm telling you that you have been a turning point for him, whether you wanted to be or not, and I would like for you to know that going in.
So that whatever choice you make is the one you actually make. "
I drink the coffee.
I look at the valley.
"Are you trying to talk me into staying."
"I'm trying not to talk you into anything. I'm a surgeon. I work in information. I am giving you information."
"Okay."
"Also," she says, "if you want a job, I have one for you."
I turn.
"What."
"I want you to come work at the clinic. Build out the trauma capabilities.
Train field medics for the MC. The system you've been refining on the road — the prediction work, the cortisol-and-shift-cycle profile for feral risk — I want you to develop it here, with resources, with Hex's analysis support, with the time to publish it through the underground medical networks that need it.
I have been wanting a trauma medic for the Sinners for four years.
I have not found one I trusted. I trust you. "
"You met me three days ago."
"Hex met you eight years ago in a Pennsylvania case file. I have been reading your work since I read his summary of it. I would not be offering you the job if I had not done my homework. I do homework, Petra."
I drink the coffee.
I think about it.
I say, "Let me finish the ten days. I will give you an answer at the end."
"Fair."
We sit on the porch and watch the valley go from gold to copper to that particular shade of blue that mountain dusks get when the sun has dropped behind the ridge but the light is still bleeding back up off the rock.
Jo refills my coffee. She tells me about the clinic — its budget, its caseload, the cases she has handled and the cases she has not been able to handle.
She is, I realize, a very good surgeon. She is also a very honest woman about her own limitations.
She tells me what she cannot do, and what she would want me to do, and the picture of the work she is describing is the picture of a job I have wanted since I was twenty-three and didn't know it could exist.
I do not cry.
I want to.
I do not.
— —
The second day, Damon takes me into the mountains on his bike.
He has a Harley — of course he has a Harley — and he has been cleared by Jo to ride as long as he keeps his head still and stays under fifty, and we ride out through the western road that climbs up into the high ridges above the compound.
The road is two-lane and patched and switchbacks through stands of pine and old hardwood, and I sit behind him with my arms around his ribs and my chin on his shoulder and I do not look down because the drop on the right side is the kind of drop where looking would not be useful.
He rides slow. Carefully. I can feel him modulating for me, for himself, for the C4, for the road.
We stop at an overlook three thousand feet above the valley.
He kills the engine. We dismount. We sit on the stone wall at the edge of the overlook and we eat sandwiches that he packed in the saddlebag, and we do not talk for the first ten minutes.
I look at the valley. I look at the back of his neck where the scar is and where, two nights ago, a feral alpha's claw raked across the surgical line and almost killed him.
I say, "Tell me about the wolf."
"What about him."
"How does he feel right now."
Damon turns his face into the wind. He thinks.
"Quiet."
"Quiet good or quiet bad."
"Quiet like a wolf who's had a long run and is sitting at the edge of a stream watching the water move. He's not asleep. He's awake. He's just — he's not pacing. He hasn't been pacing since Tuesday."
Tuesday is the day I walked into the chamber.
I do not say that out loud.
He looks at me.
"You knew that," he says.
"I suspected."
"Petra."
"Yes."
"You should know what's happening here. I am not going to pretend I don't know."
"What's happening here."
"My wolf has identified you as something it wants near it.
I am not telling you that to put pressure on you.
I am telling you because it would be dishonest not to.
Shifters can — when there's a pull — it can show up as something the human can't fully control.
I am telling you so that if you ever feel pushed by anything I do, you can name it, and we can address it.
I will not be the man who lets his wolf override what the woman next to him is choosing. "
I drink the water bottle he's handed me.
"What does identified as something it wants near it mean."
"I don't know how to translate it cleanly. There's no English word for it. The closest is — the wolf has decided you are inside the pack. That when you are not in the room, part of him is searching for you. That when you are in the room, he is calm in a way he has not been calm in years."
"Is that mating."
"No. Mating is different. Mating is a — there's a biochemical event.
Hormonal. It doesn't happen with humans.
What's happening with my wolf is the closest thing to mating that happens between a shifter and a non-shifter, and it is recognizable to me because I have seen it happen in compound mates I respect.
I'm not asking you to commit to anything.
I'm telling you what I know so that you have the information. "
"You and Jo really do work in information."
"Jo is my friend. She has been teaching me, slowly, how to be honest with people. She told you about the job offer."
"She did."
"Are you taking it."
"I haven't decided."
"Okay."
I look at the valley. The light is doing the gold-to-copper thing again.
The sandwiches are gone. My hand is on the stone wall and his hand is, at some point in the last ten minutes, moved next to mine, not touching, just next to, the way Damon's hand has a habit of being next to mine when he is being careful about my space.
I move my hand over his.
He lets me.
His hand turns under mine. Our fingers lace together.
We stay like that for a long time.
— —
The third day, I write in my logbook for two hours and decide that the prediction system, with Hex's analysis, could probably save twenty fighters' lives a year if it was rolled out across the eastern circuit.
The fourth day, I help Jo with a surgery on a young Sinner who took a chainsaw across his shin in the workshop. I do the closure. Jo says my closure work is better than hers. I tell her I have done more closures. She tells me I should still take the job.
The fifth day, I sit on Damon's cabin porch in the morning and drink coffee with him and watch the sunrise and we do not talk because we do not need to.
The sixth day, I tell Damon about the job offer formally, and tell him I am considering it, and he says, "Take it," in a voice that is even and careful and the most controlled he has sounded in six days.
"Why."
"Because if you take it, you are here for the right reason. Not because of me. Not because of the wolf. Because the work is the work you should be doing."
"And if I take it because of the work, and the wolf, and you."
"Then take it for all three."
The seventh day, I tell Jo yes.
The eighth day, I tell Damon yes.
He kisses me on the porch of his cabin with the sun going down behind the mountains and his hand on the side of my face and his thumb along my jaw and his wolf rumbling in his chest, a sound I can feel through the bones, and I think:
I have stopped running. I have stopped running. I have stopped running, and the ground is holding.
The ground holds.