CHAPTER 7
2188 Words
The storm arrived without warning, the way only mountain storms can.
One moment the sky was clear and star-drunk; the next the wind slammed into the ridge like a living thing, screaming through the trees and ripping shingles from roofs. Lightning forked sideways, white-blue and vicious, followed by thunder that felt like the earth itself cracking open.
Elara was on the porch when the first drops hit (fat, icy, sideways). She’d been sitting there for hours with Rowan’s book open on her lap, rereading the handwritten story until the words blurred. The wolf song had ended hours ago, but she could still feel him out there (a low, steady pulse of watchful patience).
Then the sky detonated.
She barely made it inside before the rain turned to hail the size of quarters. The cabin lights flickered once, twice, and died. The sudden darkness was absolute.
“Great,” she muttered, fumbling for the battery lantern on the shelf. “Because this week wasn’t atmospheric enough.”
Another crack of thunder rattled the windows in their frames. The temperature inside dropped ten degrees in seconds.
She had just found matches when three knocks sounded at the door (slow, deliberate, impossible to mistake).
Elara’s heart stuttered.
She opened the door to find Rowan soaked to the bone, hair plastered to his skull, water streaming from his eyelashes. He carried a dripping canvas duffel in one hand and a double-headed axe slung across his back like it weighed nothing. Lightning flashed behind him, turning him into a silhouette carved from storm and shadow.
“Power’s out ridge-wide,” he shouted over the wind. “Generator at the den’s fried. I brought the spare.”
He didn’t ask to come in. He just stood there getting hammered by hail, waiting.
Elara stepped aside.
He crossed the threshold in a rush of cold air and wet wool. The door slammed shut behind him, cutting the roar of the storm to a muffled growl.
Rowan dropped the duffel, set the axe carefully by the hearth, and stood dripping on her rug like a man awaiting judgment.
“I can go,” he said immediately. “Leave the generator and the fuel. Be back before dawn to hook it up. I just—” Thunder drowned the rest.
Elara folded her arms. “You came out in this because you were worried I’d freeze.”
A muscle jumped in his jaw. “Yes.”
She stared at him (water pooling at his feet, shirt clinging to every line of muscle, eyes glowing soft gold in the dark). Then she walked past him, grabbed a towel from the bathroom, and threw it at his head.
“Strip,” she ordered. “You’re not tracking half the forest through my cabin, and I’m not letting you die of hypothermia because your martyr complex is bigger than your common sense.”
Rowan caught the towel but didn’t move.
“Elara—”
“Now, Rowan.”
Something in her voice made him obey. He peeled off the soaked flannel, then the thermal beneath, movements stiff with cold and something else. Elara tried not to stare at the fresh bruises blooming across his ribs (training, or Hollowed, or both). She failed.
He toed off his boots, hesitated at the button of his jeans.
She rolled her eyes. “I’ve seen you naked, remember? Storm’s not the only thing that happened last week.”
A flush crawled up his neck despite the cold. He shucked the rest, wrapped the towel low around his hips, and stood there dripping and magnificent and trying very hard not to look at the couch where they’d wrecked each other six nights ago.
Elara tossed him a pair of sweatpants someone had left in the dryer (probably Finn’s; they’d be comically small). Rowan pulled them on without comment. They hung indecently low and ended somewhere around his calves.
She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing.
He noticed anyway. The corner of his mouth twitched.
“Generator,” he said, clearing his throat. “I’ll set it up.”
“Later.” She pointed at the couch. “Sit. You’re shaking.”
He sat.
She built up the fire until it roared, then disappeared into the kitchen and came back with two mugs of something that steamed and smelled suspiciously like the whiskey Nora kept in a mason jar labeled snakebite remedy.
Rowan took the mug with both hands like it might run away.
They drank in silence while the storm tried to tear the roof off.
Eventually he spoke, voice low. “I wasn’t going to come.”
“I know.”
“I sat outside your cabin for an hour arguing with myself like an idiot.”
“I know that too.”
He looked at her then (really looked). “I’m trying to do this right.”
“You’re doing it wrong,” she said softly. “You’re treating me like I’m made of glass and deadlines. I’m not going to shatter, Rowan. And I’m not going to vanish if you stay the night.”
Lightning flashed again, illuminating the room in stark white. For a heartbeat his face was raw (hope and terror and want all tangled together).
He set the mug down carefully.
“Then tell me what you need,” he said. “No guessing. No gifts. Just words.”
Elara put her own mug aside and climbed into his lap, straddling his thighs, knees sinking into the couch on either side of him. His hands came up automatically, settling on her hips like they belonged there.
“I need you to stop acting like wanting me is a crime,” she said against his mouth. “I need you to stay tonight. Not on the roof. Not on the porch. Here. With me.”
Rowan’s grip tightened, almost bruising.
“Elara—”
“I’m not saying yes to forever,” she whispered. “I’m saying yes to tonight. One storm at a time.”
Thunder rolled, long and low, shaking the cabin down to its bones.
Rowan kissed her like a man finally allowed to breathe.
They never made it to the bedroom.
The couch took the first round (urgent, clothes half-on, her nails scoring down his back while the fire painted them in shifting gold). The rug took the second (slower, worshipful, his mouth mapping every inch of skin like he was memorizing a country he might never be allowed to keep). By the time they stumbled to the bed, the storm had settled into a steady, pounding rain that matched the rhythm of their bodies.
After, they lay tangled and sweat-damp, listening to water drum on the tin roof.
Rowan traced idle circles over the mark on her arm. It glowed soft gold, content.
“I used to hate storms,” he murmured into her hair. “My mother died in one like this. Hollowed used the noise to mask their approach.”
Elara pressed closer. “And now?”
“Now they sound like you,” he said simply. “Like the first time you laughed at something I said and meant it.”
She hid her face against his throat so he wouldn’t see the tears.
Hours later, power still out and the fire burned to embers, she woke to find him watching her in the dark.
“Couldn’t sleep?” she asked, voice husky.
“Memorizing,” he said. “In case tomorrow you decide this was a mistake.”
Elara reached up and touched the fresh bite mark she’d left on his shoulder (not the claiming bite, just teeth and possession and mine for tonight).
“I’m not there yet,” she whispered. “But I’m closer than I was yesterday.”
Rowan closed his eyes like the words hurt in the best way.
Outside, the storm began to ease, wind dying to a whisper, rain softening to a lullaby.
Inside, they slept wrapped around each other like two people who had finally stopped running (at least until morning).
Fourteen days.
The countdown still existed.
But for the first time, it felt less like a guillotine and more like a promise.
The storm broke just before dawn.
Elara woke to the sudden, absolute stillness that comes after violence (no wind, no rain, only the slow drip of water from the eaves and the hush of a forest catching its breath). The fire had burned down to a nest of ruby coals. Rowan was still wrapped around her, one heavy arm locked across her waist, his face buried in the curve of her neck. His breathing was deep and even, the first truly unguarded sleep she’d ever felt from him through the bond.
She lay there a long time, listening to the quiet and to the steady drum of his heart against her spine.
Fourteen days.
The number sat in her chest like a stone, but it no longer felt cold.
Carefully (so carefully) she turned in the circle of his arms until they were face to face. Rowan stirred, eyes slitting open to molten gold in the half-light.
“Morning,” she whispered.
He made a low, sleepy sound and pulled her closer, nose nudging along her jaw like he was re-learning her scent after only a few hours apart. “Thought I dreamed you,” he mumbled against her skin.
“Nope. Still real. Still a mess.”
“Thank f**k for that.”
She laughed once, soft and startled, and felt the bond flare warm and bright between them (no urgency now, just quiet, steady wonder).
Outside, the world was washed clean. Mist drifted between the trees in slow, silver ribbons. Every needle glittered with leftover rain. The ridge smelled like ozone and crushed pine and new beginnings.
Rowan’s hand slid up her back, fingers threading through her hair. “I should check the generator,” he said, but made no move to leave.
“In a minute,” she said, and kissed him (slow, lazy, morning-sweet).
They stayed like that until the sun climbed high enough to spill pale light across the bed. Eventually hunger and the real world dragged them upright. Rowan pulled on the too-small sweatpants again; Elara found one of his flannel shirts and rolled the sleeves eight times. It hung to mid-thigh and smelled like him.
They worked side by side in the gray dawn: Rowan wrestling the generator into place while she handed him tools and held the flashlight between her teeth. Their fingers brushed every time they passed something (accidental, then not). Neither of them mentioned it.
When the lights flickered back on and the refrigerator hummed to life, Rowan straightened and looked at her across the porch.
“Storm took down half the east ridge trail,” he said. “Mara wants me up there before the next front moves in. Could be gone two, maybe three days.”
The words were casual. The bond underneath them was not.
Elara felt the distance already yawning open (cold and sharp). She hated it.
She crossed the porch and rose on her toes to kiss him once more, quick and fierce.
“Come back in one piece,” she said against his mouth. “That’s an order, Alpha.”
Rowan’s arms came around her hard enough to lift her off her feet. “Yes, ma’am.”
He left ten minutes later (pack slung over one shoulder, axe across his back, the taste of him still on her lips). She watched from the doorway until the trees swallowed him whole.
The cabin felt too big and too quiet without him.
Elara stood there a long moment, arms wrapped around herself, breathing through the sudden ache of missing someone who had only been gone five minutes.
Then she squared her shoulders, went inside, and opened the Grimm’s book to the page with his handwritten story.
She read it again. And again.
On the fifth read-through she noticed something she’d missed before: tucked between the last page and the back cover was a single raven feather and a tiny, folded square of paper.
She unfolded it with careful fingers.
In Rowan’s handwriting, small and fierce:
I built the door.
You don’t have to walk through it today.
But when you do, I’ll be waiting on the other side with coffee and terrible jokes and every yes you’ve never been allowed to give.
No rush.
Just know the hinges swing both ways.
—R
At the bottom, almost as an afterthought:
P.S. If you decide never is the answer, that’s a door too.
I’ll hold it open for you.
Elara pressed the note to her chest and looked out at the quiet, dripping forest.
Fourteen days.
She smiled (small, crooked, and terrifyingly certain).
She still wasn’t ready to walk through the door.
But she was starting to believe the man on the other side would wait forever if she asked him to.
And for the first time since the mark had burned itself into her skin, that felt like power instead of a prison.
- Writer
