Chapter 6: Nothing

I stepped away from her hand.

"Good night, Mom," I said, loud enough for the couple by the coat rack to hear.

She kept smiling until they looked away.

Then she didn't.

The next morning Bastian took me down to the lake before breakfast.

Frost was on the dock. The water was flat and grey.

"We're not going to force anything," he said. "We're just going to listen."

"Listen to what?"

"To her. Your wolf."

"I don't know if there's a her."

"There is." He said it like he'd say the lake was wet. "Close your eyes."

I closed them.

"Breathe in through your nose," he said. "Tell me what you smell."

"Lake. Pine. Coffee." I hesitated. "You."

"What do I smell like?"

"Cedar. And cold air."

"Good. Keep going. Deeper than that."

I kept going.

There was nothing under it.

Just my own heartbeat and the water slapping the posts.

We did it every morning.

Then every afternoon.

He taught me what a shift feels like at the start, the heat in the spine, the ache in the jaw.

I waited for the heat.

It didn't come.

On the fourth day I sat down on the end of the dock and put my face in my hands.

"She's not there," I said. "Maybe Lottie's right."

"Lottie is wrong about most things."

"You don't know that."

"I watched her pour herself three glasses of wine at dinner and tell a Council Alpha his pack was a rounding error." He sat beside me. "I know that."

I laughed into my hands.

He didn't touch me.

He never did unless I moved first.

I noticed that.

"Why are you so sure?" I asked.

"Because the moment the light hit you, something in my chest turned its head." He looked out at the water. "It hasn't looked away since."

I dropped my hands and looked at him.

He was close.

Closer than I'd realized.

His shoulder was an inch from mine, and the heat coming off him reached me through two coats.

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