Chapter 5 – The Space They Give Her
1725 Words
By sunset I have a bag.
It’s not much. Two pairs of jeans, a stack of worn shirts, the thick sweater Selvi knit me last winter because she said alphas run hot and lunas get cold. A tin of tea that smells like chamomile and pine. The old photo of the inner circle someone insisted on printing even though we all carry memories in scent and sound more than ink.
My hand hesitates on the frame. In the picture, I’m between Roenan and Garrik, laughing at something just off-camera. Nyla’s on my hip, waving a sticky hand. Corren stands on Roen’s other side, pretending to be bored and failing.
I tuck it into the bag anyway. Leaving doesn’t mean erasing.
Selvi leans against my doorframe, arms folded, eyes red-rimmed. “You’re really going to that cabin.”
“Your alpha asked me not to,” I say, shouldering the bag. “Your pack needs me to.”
She snorts softly. “You’re allowed to need things too, you know.”
“Right now I need everyone to be able to sleep without wondering if I’m going to wake up on top of their kids,” I say. The words taste like iron. “This is… something I can give them.”
Selvi pushes off the frame and crosses the room. “Take this, at least.” She holds out a small leather pouch.
“What is it?”
“Dried bloodroot, valerian, and that weird flower Vaeren keeps sending,” she says. “You said the smell helps your wolf calm down.”
The pouch is soft under my fingers, worn from being handled. “I said it helps sometimes.”
“Then ‘sometimes’ goes in your bag.” Her voice cracks. “And this.”
She steps closer and hugs me so hard my bones creak. For a heartbeat I’m afraid to hug her back—my muscles tense, my wolf flinches—but then I force myself to breathe, to smell her citrus shampoo and baking sugar and the warm, steady thrum of pack in her skin.
I wrap my arms around her and hold on.
“Visit,” she mutters into my shoulder. “If you don’t, I’ll hike out there and drag you back just so I can yell at you to your face.”
“I’ll come in,” I promise. “When it’s… better.”
When I’m better.
We both hear the lie, but neither of us calls it out.
Downstairs, the house hums low and uneasy. Wolves move through the halls with that hyper-aware quiet that follows any pack wound. I pass Meren in the corridor; they squeeze my arm, murmuring, “Call if anything shifts. In you, not just the sky.”
“I will,” I say.
Nyla darts out from behind their legs. She stops short when she sees my bag, eyes going round.
“You’re going?” she asks. Her voice is small in a way that guts me.
“Just for a while,” I say carefully. “The cabin by the south ridge. Remember? We used to picnic there.”
She nods, chewing her lip. “Is it because of Corren?”
The question knocks the air out of me. “It’s because of me,” I say honestly. “Because my wolf is still scared and loud, and I need to get better at holding her before I stand in the middle of everyone again.”
Nyla’s eyes glisten. “I wasn’t scared of you,” she whispers. “Not really. I was scared for you. You looked like you couldn’t breathe.”
My throat tightens. I kneel, ignoring the protest of my healing ribs, and cup her face. “You’re too smart for us, you know that?”
She gives me a wobbly half-smile. “Roen said… he said sometimes we send wolves away when they’re hurt if we’re cowards. But we’re not. You’re choosing this. That’s different.”
I glance over her shoulder. Roenan stands at the far end of the hall, watching us. For once, he doesn’t try to look like anything but what he is: a man torn open.
“We’ll still feel you,” Nyla says, tapping the place over her heart where the pack bond hums. “Right?”
“Yes,” I say softly. “You will.”
She flings her arms around my neck. My wolf flinches, then melts, pressing forward to breathe in the scent of pup, of home. I cling for a beat longer than I should, then gently pry her arms free.
“Go on,” I murmur. “Meren needs help with the herbs or they’ll mix up sleep tea with stomach purge again.”
She makes a face and scampers off, the moment softened by her muttered, “Disgusting,” trailing behind her.
Then it’s just Roenan and me.
He closes the distance slowly, as if afraid I’ll bolt. He’s in worn jeans and a dark shirt rolled to his forearms, alpha marks faintly visible on his skin. He looks like a man about to go to war and a man about to watch his world walk away—all at once.
“I set guards,” he says quietly. “Not in your pocket. On the ridge trail, the cabin perimeter. They’ll stay out of sight unless you call.”
“Good,” I say. “My wolf likes knowing there are teeth between us and the dark.”
His mouth twists. “She has plenty of teeth of her own.”
“She has terrible aim right now.”
A ghost of a smile flickers and dies. He reaches for my bag. “Let me carry that.”
“I can—”
“Lys.” There’s a plea in the single syllable. “Let me at least do that much.”
I let go.
We walk out together, down the front steps of the packhouse, into the chill evening air. A few wolves linger near the doorway, pretending not to watch. Selvi, Corren, Garrik, Meren, a handful of others. Their scents are a mixture of worry and brittle hope.
I pause at the bottom of the steps and turn.
“I’m not being banished,” I say, pitching my voice to carry. “I’m not being punished. I’m taking space because I love you all too much to pretend I’m not dangerous right now. I will come back. When it’s safer. When I’m safer.”
Corren’s throat bobs. Garrik’s eyes flicker, conflicted. Someone mutters, “She’s still our luna,” under their breath.
Roenan steps to my side, close enough that our shoulders almost brush. “She is,” he says, voice carrying alpha-clear through the yard. “And this choice is hers. Under my protection. Under my word.”
Something in the tension loosens. Not entirely. But a little.
We turn toward the path.
For the first twenty steps, I can feel the eyes on my back like a weight. After that, the packhouse disappears behind trees, and it’s just the forest and us and the thin, aching thread of bond humming between my ribs.
“You don’t have to go alone,” Roenan says after a while, voice low. “I could—”
“If you come,” I say gently, “it stops being space.”
He swallows. “I know.”
We walk in silence. The trail climbs, roots and stones familiar under my boots. My wolf eases as the city noises fade, replaced by birdsong and wind and the rustle of small creatures in the underbrush.
After a while, I say, “Do you remember the first time you brought me up here?”
He huffs a breath. “You complained the entire way about your shoes.”
“They were new,” I protest. “And you made me shift halfway up because you said my human legs were too slow.”
“You left blisters on my hands where you bit me for laughing,” he says, a real smile curving his mouth now.
The memory wraps around us for a few steps, easing the raw edges.
The cabin appears through the trees like something out of a different life—stone chimney, wooden porch, moss creeping up the foundation. It smells like damp wood and old smoke and faintly of the patrol wolves who have checked on it over the months.
Roenan sets my bag on the porch. He doesn’t cross the threshold.
“I’ll come by,” he says. “If you want me to. If you don’t… I’ll stay out of scent-range.”
My throat tightens. “I don’t know yet,” I admit. “Some days I might need you. Some days I might need to forget there’s a whole pack waiting to see if I explode.”
He nods once, accepting that more easily than I expected. “Then we’ll take it day by day.”
Silence drapes over us. The sky is bleeding into twilight, streaks of pink and gold behind the treeline. The air is cold enough that my breath ghosts white.
He reaches up, slowly, giving me time to step back. I don’t. His fingers brush my cheek, rough and warm.
“Come back to me,” he says softly. “Whole. Or cracked. Or whatever you need to be. Just come back.”
My eyes sting. “That depends on whether you’re still here when I do.”
He flinches, then nods. “Then I’ll make sure I am.”
I step back before I can collapse into him. Turn the knob. The cabin door groans open on creaking hinges.
Inside smells like dust and pine. Outside smells like everything I’m terrified of losing.
I look over my shoulder one last time.
“Go home, Roenan,” I say. “Your pack needs you.”
His gaze meets mine, steady and wrecked. “So do you.”
I don’t answer. I step inside and close the door, leaning my forehead against the cool wood as his footsteps retreat down the path.
For the first time since the attack, the pack’s noise fades to a distant hum, and in the sudden quiet I hear what I’ve been drowning out for months:
The sound of my own wolf, breathing.
- Writer
