Sleep doesn’t come easily.
Even after the house settles and the quiet returns to something that almost resembles normal, my body refuses to follow. Every time I close my eyes, I see them again. The eyes in the dark, low and watching, unmoving in a way that felt far too deliberate to be instinct alone.
I hear the growl, feel it vibrating through my chest, and beneath it all is the sharp, lingering awareness that none of it had been random.
They had been there for me.
That thought hovers longer than anything else, threading through the edges of my mind no matter how many times I try to push it away. No matter how many times I try to explain it into something reasonable. Wolves don’t stalk houses. They don’t circle and wait like that, like they’re thinking or planning.
And they definite
