Jack's POV
The woods were alive that morning, restless with whispers I didn’t care to hear.
I hadn’t slept. Not really. Even after I left her door, even after the quiet settled back into the cottage, her voice lingered in my head. Small. Hesitant. Embarrassed.
I got my period.
The words had been like a strike to the chest. Not because of what they meant—I wasn’t clueless about human women and their cycles—but because of the way she’d said it. Low, ashamed, like a confession of weakness.
Jennifer didn’t realize I didn’t see it as weakness at all.
But she didn’t know me yet. Not the real me.
And maybe it was better that way.
Still, the moment she’d asked for cloth, the moment she’d stood in the kitchen with that flush painting her cheeks and muttered that she needed to go get “the ne
