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I tell her everything.
She listens. She doesn’t interrupt. She doesn’t move. She stands in the center of the room with her fists at her sides and her tears drying on her cheeks and she listens.
“So you knew I was being affected by this before I did?”
“Yes.”
“And you kept touching me.”
“Yes.”
“You followed me home.”
“Yes.”
“Because you knew it would make the bond stronger.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
I hold her gaze.
“Because I wanted you.”
“That’s it?”
“No. Because you’re my mate. Because every instinct I have told me to keep you close. Because I knew if I gave you enough time and enough information, you might decide I was something you wanted no part of.”
“So you made that decision harder for me.”
“Yes.”
“Show me,” she says.
“Show you what?”
“What you are. I’ve read the notebook. I’ve seen the eyes. I know the word. But I need to see it. I need to see the thing that’s been hiding behind your face since the day I met you.”
I hesitate. Not because I’m afraid of the shift. Because I’m afraid of what she’ll see when the man disappears and the wolf is standing in his place. Every human who has ever witnessed the shift has reacted with terror. It’s the fundamental incompatibility between what humans believe is possible and what the shift reveals is real.
“Please,” she says. The word is quiet and absolute.
I shift.
The pain is brief. The convulsion that reshapes bone and muscle, that replaces skin with fur and rearranges a human face into a wolf’s muzzle. It takes two seconds. It feels like dying. And then I’m standing on four legs in the middle of the room, a wolf with black fur and gold eyes, looking up at the woman I love through a set of senses that are richer and sharper and more honest than anything the human body provides.
She takes a step backward. One step. Her hand goes to her mouth. Her heartbeat, which I can hear with devastating clarity in wolf form, explodes into a sprint. The fear in her scent is sudden and sharp and it hits me like a physical blow, because the wolf’s response to his mate’s fear is not calm assessment. It’s anguish. An instinct to protect that has no target because the thing she’s afraid of is me.
I stay still. I lower my head. I make myself small, as small as a wolf can make himself, and I wait.
She breathes. One breath. Two. Three. The fear scent fades, not entirely but enough. The heartbeat slows from a sprint to a run. She’s looking at me, really looking, her eyes moving over the wolf's body. The fur. The size. The gold eyes that she’s seen flash in the man’s face and that now occupy the wolf’s skull without interruption.
She takes a step forward.
I hold absolutely still.
She kneels. Her hand extends. It’s shaking. I can see the tremor, the fine vibration of fingers that aren’t sure what they’re reaching for.
