Page 54 of Fate, Interrupted

“You have been careless,” he says.

The words are low, declarative, with a finality that sits in my gut like a stone.

“I haven’t brought her into pack business,” I say.

“You brought yourself into hers.” He doesn’t turn from the window. “Repeatedly. Visibly. In ways that have already been noted by people in this pack and other packs whose job it is to watch us.” He pauses. “And then she walked onto this dock.”

“That was her choice.”

“That she made it so is the part that concerns me.”

I don’t answer that. I can’t. What I want to tell him is that Norah is her own person, not ruled by biases and prejudices. A woman with a backbone who makes her own decisions, values honesty, and loves passionately. But I can’t. Because he’ll laugh at the fact that I’ve only known her for three weeks, and I’m professing what amounts to love.

He’s still looking out over the dock.

“When I was younger than you, one of my cousins became involved with a human woman from the north side of Larkin.”

His voice is different now—the timbre of a man moving into territory he rarely enters, where the words are chosen more carefully because the ground beneath them is less stable.

“It began as a conversation. A walk. Time spent in each other’s company. None of it seemed serious until it was.”

I sit perfectly still, waiting for the typhoon to strike.

“By the time he understood how serious it had become, neither of them controlled what came next.”

He pauses, visibly collecting himself.

It’s here I start thinking about my mother, Grace. About being an eight-year-old boy and my confusion when she died. How everything changed, and how my father was in the months after, moving through these same rooms—rawer, less contained, a man who had not yet decided what to do with an overwhelming grief.

He’s not talking about his cousin. Not entirely.

I don’t say so.

“It ended badly,” he continues. “Not because either of them was careless, or because they meant harm. More because wolves and humans can never fully understand each other. When it breaks, it breaks in ways that don’t heal cleanly.”

The window light falls across his shoulders, and for a moment he looks older than he usually does. Carrying more weight than he usually shows.

He looks directly at me.

“I’m not asking because I enjoy involving myself in your personal life.” The formality of his words is its own telling—this is him keeping the distance, putting the structure back.

“I’m asking because wolves and humans do not step into each other’s world lightly. The consequences move in both directions, and they move further than you can see from where you’re standing.”

“She already stepped into mine,” I say. “Today. She made that choice herself.”

“And that should concern you more than it seems to. You’re more defensive than a man usually is about a woman who means nothing to him.”

I don’t give him the satisfaction of an answer.

“She matters to you.” He says it softly. The flatness of a man stating a fact he’s already confirmed. “Whether or not you have admitted that to yourself.”

I push to my feet.

“So, what is it you’re saying?”

In that moment, I see a fracture in his resolve. Not softness exactly.

“I’m telling you to be careful. If this continues, it will not remain a private matter. Not for you. Not for her.” He pauses. “And not for this family.”