Page 7
He starts toward the kitchen, so I get up with him. The foyer shrinks around several hundred pounds of bear as soon as I turn; my shoulder clips one wall, a rear paw catches the rug, and my flank sends a narrow table skidding hard enough to rattle whatever is inside the drawer. Arlo stops at the kitchen counter and looks from the table to me. "This house was not designed with you in mind."
He checks that nothing broke, then keeps moving while I follow and map the house properly now that I’m awake enough to care about more than the front door. The windows matter more than the furniture.
So do the exterior doors, the narrow hall, and the way both bedrooms sit beyond the same choke point. Anyone coming through the front has to pass me if I stay near the stairs, but the back entrance changes the angles completely. By the time Arlo pushes open the spare bedroom, I already know how many turns separate it from each door and which walls would hide someone long enough to become a problem.
"Your room," he says, leaning one shoulder against the frame. "Bed, privacy, four walls, no guards." I step inside and make one slow circuit. The gray sheets are still tucked beneath the mattress, the closet stands empty, and old laundry soap clings to fabric that hasn’t been touched in months. The window faces away from the front of the house, and from here someone coming through the back could reach Arlo’s room before I crossed the hall.
I turn and leave. "Orion, come back here." I hear him clearly.
When he follows me into the hall and points toward the spare room, I look from his hand to his face so there can be no question that I understood. The problem isn’t the bed or the unfamiliar smell. It’s the distance between that room and the places someone could reach him first.
Arlo follows my attention down the hall toward his bedroom, and tired recognition settles over his face. "You’re choosing based on defensive position." He rubs both hands over his face and exhales carefully through the pain.
"Of course you are." His room makes more sense the moment I step inside. Leather, coffee, clean fabric, skin, and the faint iron trace of blood he missed while washing his hands fill the space, but more importantly I can see farther toward the front of the house from here. I check beneath the bed, inside the closet, behind the door, around the locked window, and along the vents before I let myself believe there isn’t another way in.
When I turn, Arlo has one hand pressed flat to his ribs. My eyes go there before I can look anywhere else. "I’m lying down before you decide to fix me again," he says, catching the direction of my stare. He points toward the hall with his free hand. "You can sleep wherever you want as long as it isn’t directly on top of me."
He shuts the door after I step out. I wait in the hallway until his breathing slows, then walk the route from the front entrance to his room twice, testing it against the back door each time. The answer stays the same: if someone comes through the kitchen while I’m guarding the front, Arlo ends up on the wrong side of me. I sit outside his door for several minutes trying to find a version of the house that changes that, but walls do not rearrange themselves because I dislike them.
I shove his bedroom door open with my shoulder. Arlo comes upright so fast one hand flies toward the nightstand, closes on empty wood, and curls into a fist when he remembers there is no weapon there. "Jesus fucking Christ, Orion."
I stay in the doorway and look down the hall, then back at him. His irritation gives way to understanding slowly enough that I watch the exact moment he realizes what I want. "No."
I cross the room, take the edge of his blanket between my teeth, and pull carefully enough not to catch fabric trapped beneath him. Arlo grabs the other end before I get more than a few inches. "Absolutely not." I pull once anyway, and he slides across the mattress with a strangled curse before digging in his heels.
"You are not relocating me because you dislike the floor plan." Another pull gets him moving, although not in the way I intended. Arlo gets off the bed under his own power and spends the entire walk down the hall muttering about property rights, damaged ribs, and the insanity of arguing with a bear before breakfast.
I stay close enough to make sure he keeps going until he sits on the spare bed, then lower myself across the doorway with my back toward him and my head facing the hall. From here, Arlo is behind me and every approach to the room stays in front.
He studies the blocked doorway for a long time. I don’t need the bond to understand that he hates being arranged like something I have to guard, but he also looks toward the hall and sees what I saw. Eventually the mattress shifts as he finds a position that doesn’t pull at his ribs. His breathing catches once, then settles into a rhythm I can follow while I listen past it for the front lock, the kitchen door, and anything moving where it shouldn’t.
Wind drags branches along the siding hard enough to pull me out of the hallway watch. The glass of water Arlo has started leaving beside the spare bed catches the light when I turn, one of the small changes that came after I moved him in here. He shifts behind me, his breathing catching when his ribs pull wrong, and the distance between the doorway and the bed bothers me more every time he moves.
When his breath breaks again, I get to my feet. Branches drag along the siding in long uneven scratches, then stop just long enough for the silence afterward to feel wrong. I can’t see that side of the house from the doorway, and each time the sound comes back I lift my head to listen for something underneath it.
I stand and step inside. Arlo wakes before I reach him, his body going rigid beneath the blanket as fear flashes through the thin bond hard enough to stop me beside the mattress. I keep my weight on the floor and lower my head instead of moving any closer.
"Orion?" His voice stays quiet even though I can smell the fear now. "What do you need?"
I need him closer than the doorway allows. I need the windows, the hall, and both exterior doors to stay beyond me while he sleeps where I can hear every change in his breathing. The thought has been circling for nights, but in this shape there is no human mouth to give it to him.
Frustration presses through the bond instead—door, window, bed, distance, Arlo—pieces of the same problem pushing at him until his breathing changes. He goes very still.
"Was that you?" I answer with a low hum, and his eyes widen before he slowly lifts one hand between us. He doesn’t reach the rest of the way. "Can I touch you?"
I stare at his hand. People have reached for me to restrain me, examine me, move me, inject me, hold me still long enough for somebody else to decide what came next. Nobody stopped with their hand suspended in the air and waited for me to choose the rest.
Arlo does. His palm stays open where I can see it, and the fear in the bond eases while neither of us moves. I lower my head until my chest is within reach.
Only then does he touch me, his palm settling into the fur without gripping or pushing. His fingers sink into the thick coat over my chest and stay there, warm and still, while the bond opens a little farther under the contact. I can feel the question gathering in him before he gives it words.
"Can you hear me?" A low vibration answers against his palm.
Arlo’s breath catches. "You can." I hum again, and the realization works across his face as he starts going back through the last several days—every question I answered with a look, every instruction I ignored on purpose, every time he talked to me as if understanding might be somewhere between animal and human instead of fully intact. "You understood me the whole time."
The disbelief is sharper than anger, and I watch him wrestle with it while his hand remains buried in my fur. Irritation comes first through the bond, then embarrassment, then enough relief that the muscles around his mouth loosen. I don’t need words to tell him that yes, I understood every ridiculous thing he said while assuming I couldn’t answer.
Arlo shifts across the mattress and leaves space beside him without taking his hand away. I don’t climb onto the bed. I lower myself to the floor with my back against the mattress instead, close enough that the side of my neck stays beneath his fingers and every movement he makes travels through the frame into my spine.
