He came back on a Tuesday.
Not because Tuesday meant anything.
Because it was the earliest he could move without the drive looking like what it was, a man covering three hundred miles of mountain road in the dark because his wolf had stopped accepting the distance as a condition he was willing to maintain.
He had left Iron Crest at two in the morning.
I didn't know that yet. I didn't know any of it yet. I was in the kitchen at half past five doing what I did every morning at half past five, coffee on, cast iron pans heating, the quiet mechanical rhythm of feeding a house before the house woke up, and the first indication I had that anything was different about this Tuesday was my wolf.
She came awake like a struck match.
Not gradually. Not the slow surfacing of her usual morning aler
