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"I think I finally have one."

He leans in slowly, giving me time to stop him if I want to, and I don't want to, not even slightly. His hand slides from my jaw into my hair, and for one suspended breath his mouth is close enough to mine that I can feel the warmth of it.

Then his phone buzzes against the table, sharp and jarring in the quiet cabin, and he pulls back just enough to check it, jaw tight with something that looks like frustration.

"Everett," he says, reading whatever's on the screen. "Says it's important. I need to take this."

"Go. I'll be here."

He hesitates at the door, glancing back at me with an expression that promises this isn't finished, not even close. "This conversation isn't over," he says.

"I'm counting on it."

He disappears out into the dark to take the call, and I sit alone by the fire afterward, heart still racing from how close we came, from the particular ache of wanting something interrupted right at the edge of having it. Whatever's happening between us has stopped being something either of us can talk ourselves out of.

I just hope whatever Everett needed doesn't mean more danger circling closer than either of us realizes.

12

KELLAN

The call from Everett turns out to be nothing more urgent than a routine boundary check gone slightly sideways, a young pack member wandering closer to the county road than protocol allows, easily resolved once I talk him through where to redirect the kid. By the time I get back to the cabin, the moment with Zoey has cooled enough that neither of us tries to pick it back up, though the awareness of it sits between us for days afterward, unfinished and impossible to ignore.

I tell myself I'll find the right time to tell her everything. Not yet, not with an active threat still circling the property, but soon, once I know she's safe enough to handle a truth this large. I don't get to choose the timing the way I plan to.

We're deep in the eastern stretch of forest four days later, further out than I usually take her, working through terrain reading that matters if she ever needs to navigate this section alone. She's ahead of me by maybe ten feet, crouched near a set of tracks I pointed out a moment earlier, when the brush explodes thirty yards downslope and a black bear breaks cover at a dead run, straight toward her.

There's no time for anything except instinct.

I'm moving before I've fully processed what I'm seeing, faster than my human body should be able to cover ground, and somewhere in that desperate half-second between seeing the bear and reaching her, the careful control I've maintained for seventeen years slips entirely. I feel the shift start low in my spine, claws lengthening, muscle and bone rearranging themselves into something that moves faster and hits harder than anything human ever could.

I get between Zoey and the bear a full second before it would have reached her, and the impact when it hits me instead nearly takes my legs out from under me even with the strength the shift gives me. I roar something low and violent, more animal than voice, and shove the bear back hard enough that it stumbles, reconsiders, and finally breaks off toward the tree line with a final warning huff before it disappears into the brush.

The whole thing takes maybe four seconds. It's long enough to change everything.

I'm still crouched where I landed, breathing hard, hands that aren't entirely human yet gripping the ground in front of me, when I finally turn to check on her. Zoey's frozen exactly where she was, face pale, eyes wide and fixed on me with an expression I can't read fast enough to know if it's fear or something else entirely.

"Kellan." My name, barely a whisper, shaking. "What was that? What did you just do?"

I don't have an answer ready. I don't have anything ready, actually, every instinct I've built around secrecy screaming at me to run before she sees any more than she already has, before the shift finishes retracting and she gets a clear look at hands that don't look fully human yet.

"Are you hurt," I manage instead, voice rougher than usual, still fighting the last of the shift back under control.

"No. I'm not hurt. You just moved like nothing I've ever seen a person move, and your hands—" She stops, staring at my hands like she can't quite process what she saw. "What are you?"

The question lands exactly like I always knew it would eventually, except I'm not remotely ready for it, not with adrenaline still crashing through my system and every protective instinct in me telling me this is the moment I lose her entirely. Pack law is absolute about this. Exposure risks everyone, not just me, and I don't have a plan for how to explain any of it.

"I need you to trust me," I say, which isn't an answer, isn't anything close to what she deserves right now.

"Trust you? You just did something impossible in front of me and you want me to trust you instead of explaining it?"

"I can't explain it right now. I need time."

"Time." Her voice cracks slightly, disbelief and something like hurt threading through it. "Kellan, I just watched you move faster than a car and throw a three-hundred-pound bear like it weighed nothing. I think I've earned an explanation that isn't 'I need time.'"

She's right. I know she's right, and I know every second I stand here fumbling for words instead of answers is a second closer to losing whatever trust we've built over the last month. But the fear runs too deep, seventeen years of secrecy and loss screaming louder than the part of me that wants to give her everything she's asking for.

"I have to go," I say instead, hating myself even as the words leave my mouth. "I need to check the bear didn't circle back, make sure the area's clear before we head in. Stay here. I'll be right back."