“We might need our own museum at this rate,” I tease, eyeing the growing collection.
He grins. I pretend I don’t see it.
We reach a stream, and I let out a breath. The water burbles over smooth stones, cold and clear, and the bank is soft with dark mud. I sink to the ground and press my fingers into the earth.
“I missed this,” I say softly. “The woods. The dirt. The water.” I look up at him. “The quiet.”
He nods. He gets it. I can tell by the way his shoulders relax out here, the way his breathing slows. The forest does something to him, too.
“You don’t say much, do you?” I say, then wince at myself because, obviously, he doesn’t. “That’s okay. I talk enough for both of us. Had to learn to keep myself company, you know?”
His expression shifts. Something quick moves behind his eyes, there and gone, but I catch it. An alpha surrounded by pack members who still somehow manages to be alone.
Takes one to know one.
“Good for skipping,” I say, holding up a perfectly round, smooth stone from the shallows. “We should try it on the way back.”
He takes the stone from me. Our fingers touch, and neither of us pulls away fast enough. The pad of his thumb drags across my knuckle—barely the smallest friction—and my whole arm lights up.
We both pretend it didn’t happen and look at the stream.
Very intently.
As if that stream is the most fascinating body of water either of us has ever seen.
We start back down the trail. I’m carrying as many rocks as I can manage, and Silas is loaded down like a pack mule, and somewhere along the way, my hand finds his.
He squeezes once. Just once.
“Silas,” I say, and I brace myself because I don’t know what’s about to come out. “Thank you.”
I don’t say what for. I’m not even sure I know. For the geode. For the walk. For not pushing, for not making me explain myself. For holding my rocks and my hand and not making a big deal about either one.
He just walks beside me, steady and warm, and it’s perfect.
18
Darius
Ifollow Silas and Blue into the forest, keeping my distance, Elias and Archer trailing behind me. We stay downwind so they won’t catch our scent.
The sweet smell of her happiness drifts back to us on the breeze. Berries and warmth and something lighter than anything I’ve ever caught from her before. Not even close to her wolf.
Joy. That’s what joy smells like on her.
It’s fucking unbearable.
Her voice floats back through the trees as she chatters to Silas. Going on about the moss on this rock, the shape of that one, the colour of the bark on a birch tree. She hasn’t stopped talking since they left the cabin.
And Silas. That hulking mute bastard. He walks beside her, nodding, carrying whatever she hands him, looking at her likeshe hung the moon. Doesn’t have to say a single word, and she opens up to him like a flower in sunlight.
My claws dig into my palms, drawing blood.
“This is bullshit,” Elias grumbles beside me, kicking at the dirt. “I don’t get it. I’m the charming one. The lady-killer. How’s she falling for the strong, silent type?”
“He doesn’t run his mouth every five seconds as you do,” Archer says.
I growl low, silencing them both. My eyes don’t leave Blue.