He doesn’t stop. He moves in me, and his hand stays where it is. And I come apart… but different from before. A slowunraveling, my body shaking around him, my hands on his face, my eyes on his because he asked me to look at him. I’m looking, and what he sees on my face is something I’ve never shown anyone.
He follows. His forehead drops against mine, his breath ragged, his hips pressing deep. The sound he makes is quiet and torn, and his hand on my belly presses. Not rough. Just there. Holding what’s underneath.
Afterward, we lie in the cot, which has not, against all odds, collapsed. His arm is around me. His hand on my stomach. His thumb doing the thing — the small, idle stroke. Back and forth.
Neither of us speaks.
His thumb moves. I watch it. Back and forth. Back and forth. Waiting.
“You know,” I say.
His thumb pauses. Resumes.
“I know.”
I close my eyes. His hand stays where it is.
“Is this the part where we talk about it?” he says.
“No. This is the part where you shut up and hold me.”
“I can do that.”
He does. But not for long.
“Tomorrow,” he says after a while.
“Yes, tomorrow. The hearing. Are you ready for it?”
He nods. “Bern will be ready too.” He’s looking at the ceiling. “He’ll have prepared for it. His people will try to contain the hearing before it reaches him.”
“And your testimony.”
“Is the part they can’t contain.”
I look at the ceiling too. The cabin is dark. His thumb is still moving.
“Just tell the truth,” I say.
“That’s the plan.”
I believe him. Because if there’s been one thing I’ve been learning about this man, it’s that he keeps his word. And despite everything he may be guilty of, that matters.
He pulls me closer, and for the first time since any of this started, I don’t pull away. I lie in his arms with his hand on the place where the word I haven’t said is growing alongside the thing I haven’t told him, and I let him hold me.
It’s a choice I make with my eyes open. Not because my wolf demands it. Not because my body needs it.
Because I want to be here. In this cot. With this man.
It doesn’t feel like surrender. It feels like the beginning of something.
I’m not ready to name it. But I’m done running from it.
His hand. My belly. The things unspoken.
I close my eyes.
Chapter 33