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His right hand stays free. I notice that immediately. Every time somebody comes too close, my attention drops to that arm as if knowing exactly where it is might stop another hand from closing around him.

A child slips between us near a table stacked with cans. I turn sideways before he can run into me, his eyes catching on the scars above my collar before his mother pulls him along. My pulse jumps anyway. Arlo is still beside me, no one has touched either of us, and I make myself open my fingers before my nails start to change.

His gaze catches the movement, then returns to the stall ahead. He doesn’t praise me for stopping, doesn’t ask whether I’m all right, doesn’t turn it into anything I have to answer. I follow him toward the butcher with my hands loose at my sides.

The butcher’s stall smells like clean metal laid over old blood. Hooks shine above the counter, scrubbed down hard enough to reflect the awning, but soap never gets all of it out. People keep passing behind me close enough that their heat reaches my back before their voices do, the muscles along my shoulders staying tight no matter how often I tell myself none of them are interested in me.

A man clips my shoulder while squeezing through the gap behind us. I turn too fast, my teeth already aching with the first pull of the shift, but he is backing away before I face him, both hands visible while he apologizes. Arlo keeps talking to the butcher, only shifting half a step closer until leather and woodsmoke cut through the blood and soap again.

The ache in my jaw recedes. I follow him away from the stall with the wrapped meat tucked under his arm, keeping my hands open even after the man disappears into the crowd. The farther we move into the market, the tighter the road gets, bodies pressing around the tables until every scent starts smearing into the next.

A family comes toward us taking up most of the lane, two children weaving between four adults. Arlo angles toward the edge to give them room. Someone calls his name behind me at the same moment one of the children cuts between us, and the back of his coat vanishes behind somebody else’s shoulder.

Then his scent drops beneath hot oil and another Alpha’s musk. The bond still tells me he’s close, but I can’t see where, and that matters more than it should. My lungs lock as faces and shoulders replace him one after another, none of them Arlo.

My jaw aches harder when I turn toward the crowd. Before I can force myself to stop looking, Arlo pushes back through the gap with one hand raised where I can see it, his face finding mine before the rest of him clears the people between us.

“I’m right here.” He stops in front of me without touching me, his eyes staying on mine. “Nobody moved me. Look at me.”

My hands are shaking, so I keep them close to my sides until I can straighten my fingers. No fear comes through the bond from him, no pain either, only irritation and the heat of being crowded. I drag in one breath, then another, holding his face in front of everything else until the market stops tilting around it.

Arlo waits until my breathing loosens. “Do you want to go home?” His voice doesn’t make the question sound like I failed something.

Home is behind us. The coffee stall is only a few tables ahead, close enough that I can smell the beans through the oil and wet cloth. I make myself look at it instead of measuring the distance back to the house.

“Coffee first.” The words scrape on the way out, but they come out whole. Arlo studies my face long enough to make sure I mean it, then turns with me, staying close as we move deeper into the lane.

His sleeve brushes mine where the crowd narrows. He doesn’t take my hand or steer me through it. I don’t ask him to. The panic is still sitting under my ribs, but it no longer owns my feet.

The man who sets me off is looking over his shoulder when he steps backward from a stall. He catches Arlo hard enough to turn his shoulder, grabbing his upper arm to keep him from falling into the table behind him. By the time the movement makes sense, his hand is already wrapped around Arlo.

I’m between them before I can get enough air into my lungs. My shoulder drives into the gap, bone pulling under the skin of my fingers as my nails darken into claws. The man lets go immediately, stumbling backward with fear bursting so sharp through his scent that every instinct in me surges after it.

Arlo steps into my path. He doesn’t grab me. He puts himself where I have to look at him if I want to keep moving, his body blocking the other man without hiding the fact that he is standing upright and unhurt.

“Orion, look at my arm.” He pulls his sleeve up, turning the skin toward me. “He caught me because I was falling. Nothing happened.”

His arm is clean. No blood, no swelling, no pain coming through the bond. I knew most of that before he showed me, which only makes the claws in my hands harder to look at. The stranger’s fear is still in my nose, my body still leaning toward the place he backed away from.

A purr starts low in Arlo’s chest. The sound barely reaches past us, but the vibration gives me something steadier than the market noise to follow. I keep my eyes on the clean skin of his arm while my claws drag back into my fingers, the reverse shift burning around two nails until blood beads at the cuticles.

The man says something behind Arlo that sounds like another apology. Arlo tells him to go, never taking his eyes off me, then waits until the space clears before we move. He doesn’t ask about the coffee again.

People open a lane around us on the walk home. I can feel them watching even when their faces turn away, the distance following us off the market road and through the residential path. By the time our house comes into view, the blood around my nails has dried dark.

The front door shuts, cutting the market away so fast my ears ring in the quiet. Arlo puts the bread and meat on the counter. I stay near the wall with my hands hanging at my sides, staring at the skin of his arm where another man’s fingers had been.

“I would’ve killed him.” My voice sounds wrong in the kitchen, too clear for what I’m saying. “That’s what I can’t stand. I knew he hadn’t hurt you. I knew why he grabbed you, and I was still halfway into the bear before I could stop.”

Arlo stays on the other side of the room, his anger still present through the bond without spilling over me. “You were already overloaded before he touched me. That matters, but it doesn’t make what almost happened harmless.” He rests his hands against the edge of the counter, leaving the space between us alone. “You knew what he was doing.”

“I did.” The answer comes out harder than I intend. I drag both hands through my hair, stopping when the torn skin around my nails catches. “That’s why I’m fucking angry. I keep thinking eventually I’ll know fast enough for it to matter, then somebody puts a hand on you and everything in me goes red anyway.”

The unfinished shift still crawls under my skin. I pace once across the kitchen, turning before I reach the hall. “You had to put yourself between me and him. If you hadn’t been there, I don’t know where I would’ve stopped.”

Arlo’s jaw tightens. “Neither do I. That scares me too.” He lets the answer sit instead of trying to make it kinder. “What I’m not going to do is take one bad second and turn it into proof that Graves is right about you.”

The anger falls away too quickly, leaving the fear underneath it exposed. I turn toward the dark window over the sink because looking at him makes it worse. “You shouldn’t have to reorganize your life around whether I can keep my claws inside my hands.”