ThorneVale

chapter sixteen

Wren didn't sleep much after he left, her mind circling the same few seconds on the porch until they'd worn a groove she couldn't seem to think her way out of.

She told Priya about it the next afternoon, in the careful, edited version she'd been giving her friend since this whole situation started, leaving out werewolves and ancient enemy organizations and replacing them with vaguer language about a complicated situation and a man with a difficult past, the kind of story that could pass, at a distance, for an ordinary small town entanglement.

"You kissed him," Priya said, delighted despite herself. "The guy who publicly rejected you at a party kissed you, and now what, you're just supposed to pretend that didn't happen?"

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do. That's the problem." Wren paced the length of her aunt's kitchen, phone pressed to her ear, restless in a way she hadn't been able to shake since the night before. "It's not that simple. There's history there. Reasons he did what he did that I actually understand now, even if I'm still angry about how he handled it."

"Understanding isn't the same as forgiving it," Priya said, echoing almost exactly what Wren had told Callum herself days earlier, and the repetition landed strangely, a truth she'd handed to someone else now being handed back to her.

"I know. I've said that to him myself." Wren stopped at the window, looking out at the yard where, if she looked closely enough, she could just make out the edge of whatever car was currently on watch duty at the ridge road. "I think what scares me isn't the history, exactly. It's how easily I want to let him back in despite it. One kiss and half of me wants to forget he ever hurt me at all, and the other half knows that's exactly the kind of thing that gets people hurt worse the second time around."

"That's not unreasonable, for what it's worth. Wanting someone and trusting them aren't the same thing, and it's smart to notice the gap." Priya's voice had gone gentler, the teasing dropping away into something more careful. "Just don't let the fear of getting hurt again talk you out of something that might actually be worth the risk. You'll know the difference, eventually, between being cautious and just being scared."

They talked a while longer, the conversation drifting into safer territory, and by the time Wren hung up she felt marginally steadier, though the restlessness hadn't fully left her.

She found herself, an hour later, walking the ridge road toward the pack house without having entirely decided to, the need to see him again stronger than her usual instinct toward careful patience.

He was outside when she arrived, working through some kind of drill with a handful of pack members in the yard, and he broke away the moment he spotted her approaching, something in his expression uncertain in a way she hadn't seen from him before, the confident control replaced by something more exposed.

"You came here," he said, like he was confirming something he didn't quite believe.

"I wanted to talk. About last night." She stopped a few feet from him, close enough to see the faint mark still healing along his jaw where the intruder had caught him. "I've been thinking about it all day, and I don't think either of us can just pretend it didn't happen."

"I don't want to pretend it didn't happen." His voice had gone lower, more careful. "I've been thinking about it too. I don't have a good excuse for it, if that's what you're looking for. I meant to keep things careful between us until you'd had time to decide what you actually wanted, and instead I just..." He trailed off, something almost helpless in the gesture that followed, a man clearly unused to not having the right words ready.

"I'm not asking for an excuse," Wren said. "I'm asking what you actually want. Not what you think is safest, not what protects me best on paper. What you want, if fear wasn't the thing making all your decisions for you."

He was quiet for a long moment, and when he finally answered, his voice had gone rough in a way that felt more honest than anything he'd said to her yet.

"I want the bond," he said. "I've wanted it since the moment it activated in that clearing, before fear talked me out of admitting it even to myself. I want to stop treating you like a danger I have to manage from a careful distance and start treating you like someone I actually get to have, if you'll still let me, after everything I've already put you through."

Wren felt something in her chest, still bruised from the rejection but undeniably warming despite it, settle into something that wasn't quite decision yet but was closer to it than she'd been in days.

"I'm not ready to just hand you everything back because you finally said the right words," she said. "You hurt me. Publicly, deliberately, even if I understand your reasons now. That doesn't just disappear because of one good conversation and one unplanned kiss."

"I know."

"But I don't want to keep pretending I don't feel this either. Whatever it is. The bond, or just you, specifically, in a way that has nothing to do with biology at all." She held his gaze, steady despite the nerves fluttering under her ribs. "So let's go slow. Actually slow, this time. No more decisions made without me. No more distance that turns out to be its own kind of danger. Just honest, from here on."

"Honest," he agreed, something in his expression easing into a warmth she hadn't seen from him before, unguarded in a way that felt like its own kind of gift. "I can do honest."

They stood together in the yard a while longer, the pack members giving them a wide, tactful berth, and Wren felt, for the first time since the rite, like the ground beneath this whole strange, dangerous situation had finally started to feel like something she was choosing, rather than something merely happening to her.