[Killian]
The word lands between us on the wet concrete, and the cold takes it.
All of them.
She looks at me. Not flinching. Not leaning toward me. She's standing with one hand resting on the IV pole, the hospital gown visible at her collar, and her eyes are doing that thing I've spent eighteen months trying to categorize and filing wrong every time. She's listening. Actually listening, not bracing.
I don't know what to do with that, so I keep talking.
"Every full moon. Everything my wolf felt, everything he—" I stop. Restart. "The tenderness. The way he held you. The things he said." My jaw is tight, but not with anger. Something worse. Something that doesn't have a word in my vocabulary. "None of that was mine while it was happening. I was locked out. And then after the ritual, it a
