Chosen By Ruin

Chapter 52 - Fire on the Log Part 1

Dante's POV

I have not slept right since Friday night.

The surge hit me at nine-eighteen. I was at the gym. I was in the middle of a heavy-bag set with Caleb spotting me, and the surge came up through the bond like a wave that had been building somewhere else and had just broken on my chest. My hands stopped. The bag swung. Caleb said, *Dante.* I did not respond for several seconds because my body was working through what had just hit me.

It was Sera. The bond was Sera. The intensity was — not mine. The intensity was hers, and Rhett's, and the magnitude was off the scale of anything I had previously felt through the bond, and I knew, with the specific knowing that comes through bond magnitude, that something had happened between Rhett and Sera in the last two minutes that had rewritten the bond's volume.

I stood at the bag. I let it stop swinging. I told Caleb I needed a minute. I went to the locker room. I sat on the bench. I put my head in my hands. I let my body do what it was going to do with the surge, which was — burn. Not anger. Not jealousy. Burn. The wolf inside my skin was on fire and there was no enemy to fight and no mate to reach and no place to put the burn except inside my own body, where the burn went and where the burn stayed for the next thirty-six hours.

The brothers' agreement says whoever Sera comes to first, the others honor. I have honored it. I am honoring it. I am not going to break it.

But honoring it has cost me a Saturday I will not get back.

Saturday I tried to train through the burn. The training did not absorb it. I tried to run through it. The run did not absorb it. I tried to eat. The food sat in my stomach. I tried to sleep. Sleep arrived briefly, three or four hours total across the night, in fragments. I woke up at four-fifty Sunday morning with the burn still in my chest and the bond chord humming at a volume I had not previously known was available.

The new volume is — better. The new volume is what the bond should have been the whole time. The brothers have been damping it because of the discipline Rhett has been imposing, and the damping has been a kindness, and the kindness has ended Friday night, and what is now operating in my chest is the bond at something closer to its actual register.

I lie in bed at five and I let myself feel it.

Rhett-channel is at a baseline I have not heard from it before. Loud. Settled. Calm. The loud a wolf gets when his mate has touched him and has not pulled away.

Maddox-channel is at the deeper note he settled into Tuesday. Holding. He is — fine. Whatever happened to him on Monday is still happening, and the still-happening is good for him.

My channel — the channel between me and Sera — is at the damped baseline. Same as it was Friday morning. Same as it was a month ago. The Rhett-clarification has not transmitted to my channel. My channel is where it was.

This is — this is correct. This is the architecture. The bond clarifies one wolf at a time. Rhett got his clarification Friday night. Mine is — pending. Pending is what pending is. I am going to live in pending until pending becomes something else, and pending becoming something else is going to happen at Sera's pace and not mine, and the not-mine is the discipline I have signed up for.

But pending burns.

I lie in bed and let it burn.

I get up at five-thirty.

I dress for the run.

Sunday is a run day. Six-fifteen at the eastern trail. Whether or not she comes, I am going to be there at six-twelve, and I am going to wait for her, and if she comes I will run with her and if she does not I will run alone, and either way I will not go to her apartment and I will not pull on the bond and I will not break the agreement my brothers and I made two months ago.

I will not break the agreement.

But I am going to be at the trail.

And I am going to be at the trail at six-twelve, as I have been at the trail at six-twelve for a month, and I am going to let Sera decide whether she comes.

---

She comes.

She arrives at six-twelve. The same arrival time she has been arriving at for a month. She is in her usual running clothes. Her hair is tied back. The November pre-dawn is cold and she is in the layers I have learned to associate with her sub-freezing morning kit. She nods at me. I nod back. We do the warm-up.

I read her through the bond before I read her with my eyes.

The signature is — different. Not depleted. Not the thinness I have read off her on her hardest days. A new register. She is — settled. The settling is what I have not felt off her in ten weeks. Her bond is at her current chord — three notes, Rhett's loud, mine and Maddox's at baseline — and the three of them are configured in a register that is — calm. The calm is what Friday night did to her.

She is — she is more her, this morning, than I have read off her since the bond confirmed.

The increased her-ness is — almost more than I can process. I have been carrying the burn for thirty-six hours and now I am two feet from the wolf the burn is for, and she is more present in her own body than I have ever felt her, and I am supposed to do the warm-up and run six miles next to her without — without doing what my body is telling me to do.

I do the warm-up.

We run.

---

The run is — strange.

It is not bad-strange. It is — different-strange. We have been running together for a month at the same pace, and the pace has settled into our bodies as a synchronized cadence we do not have to think about. This morning the cadence is — present. We are running at it. We are doing the run. But underneath the cadence, my body is doing something it has not done before, which is — pulling. Toward her. Every step I take is a step my body wants to be a step closer to her body, and the wanting is not — it is not desperate yet, but it is *audible* in a way it has not been previously. The bond is amplifying. The volume that was correct for the run a week ago is no longer correct. The volume now is — louder.

I can feel her doing the same thing.

She does not touch me. She does not speed up or slow down to push us closer. She runs the cadence. But her bond signature is — leaning. Not toward me specifically. Toward the air between us. The bond is — full of her wanting in a way that is mine to read. I have been reading her bond for ten weeks. I know what her baseline-wanting feels like. This morning the wanting is — uncovered. The discipline she has been wearing on top of the wanting has been set down for one channel and is — softening for the others. She is letting me feel what she has been damping.

The letting-me-feel is not — it is not a decision. I do not think she is doing it on purpose. I think the discipline that has been damping her has cracked, and the cracking is letting through what was always there, and the bond between us is reading what is leaking through.

What is leaking through is — substantial.

I run.

I do not turn my head. I do not say anything. I do not slow down. The run is the run. The cadence is the cadence. The bond between us is — louder than it has been, in either direction, in ten weeks, and the louder is for both of us, and the louder is going to do whatever the louder is going to do.

Six miles is a long way at this volume.

---

We hit the turnaround at six-forty-eight.

We stop at the stream. We drink water. We do not speak. The drinking-water beat has been part of our run for a month and it is — still part of our run. Sera kneels at the water. She cups it in her hands. She drinks. She does not look at me. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. Her grey-green eyes are fixed on the stream, the morning light is catching the gold-undertone of her skin, the bond is humming between us at its new register.

She stands. She turns. She looks at me.

The look is — the look is not a look I have seen on her face before.

The look is not the assessment look. The look is not the survival look. The look is not even the open-face register I have seen three times in a month. The look is — the look is hungry. Not predatory. Hungry. She is hungry for something specific, and the something is — me, and she has not yet decided what to do with the hunger, but the hunger is in her face and she is letting me see it.

I do not move.

I have been disciplined about not moving for ten weeks. I am going to keep being disciplined this morning until she tells me, in some specific way, that the discipline can ease. The discipline is what I have. The discipline is what I am bringing to the trail. She gets to decide what the discipline becomes.

She breathes. She blinks. The hungry-look is — it is not gone. It is just — set aside, for now. She turns back toward the trail.

We run.

---

We run back.

The return run is — harder than the outbound. It is harder because the outbound spent half my energy. It is harder because the trail rises slightly on the return. It is harder because the bond between us is, by minute, getting — louder, and the louder is sitting in my body alongside the muscular work of the run, and the cumulative load is more than I have run with before.

I can hear her breathing.

I can hear her heartbeat. The hearing-the-heartbeat is — not new. Wolves can hear other wolves' heartbeats at close range. What is new is that I can — distinguish hers. Among the other ambient sounds of the trail, her heartbeat is the loudest one I am tracking, the one my body is pacing itself against, the one that is keeping me on the cadence we have set.

We hit the trailhead at seven-eleven.

We stop. We bend over with our hands on our knees, breathing hard. The cool-down log is six feet to my left. We have been sitting on this log for a month. The log is the log. The log is the log where we did the trade-for-trade confession three weeks ago. The log is where we have sat in silence sixty times. The log is, this morning, going to be — something else.

I know it is going to be something else.

I do not know what.

I let her decide.

She straightens up first. She walks to the log. She sits at her end. She looks at me. The hungry-look is back. It is not set aside this time.

I sit at my end of the log.

The two-foot gap between us is — the same two-foot gap we have been sitting in for a month. Tonight — this morning — the two feet feels — it feels like a long way. I have been holding the discipline of two feet for so long that I had forgotten the two feet was a thing I was holding. This morning the two feet is — a thing I am holding. I can feel myself holding it.

She breathes.

"Dante."

"Yeah."

"I came here this morning to run."

"Okay."

"I am not — I am not going to leave the run as the only thing this morning was."

I stop breathing for half a second.

"What does that mean."

"It means I am going to do something. And I am going to ask you, before I do it, whether you want it. Because the bond is loud right now and I do not — I do not want to mistake the bond for asking. I want to ask. And I want you to answer."

"Sera."

"Yeah."

"Ask me."

"I am going to kiss you."

"Yes."

"That was fast."

"I have wanted you to kiss me for ten weeks. The asking was the only thing missing. You asked. The yes was already there."

She looks at me.

The hungry-look is now — operational. The bond between us is at a volume I have not previously known was available. My discipline is — still on. I am still at my end of the log. I am letting her come.

She comes.

---

She does not stand up. She slides toward me on the log, the small specific movement of a wolf closing a two-foot gap with her body still in the seated register, and the closing is — quick. Sera does not perform pace. She has decided. The deciding is the action. She is at my end of the log in three seconds.

Her face is six inches from mine.

The bond is — roaring.

Her hand comes up. She puts it on the side of my face. Skin to skin. The contact is —

The bond detonates.

I had felt the magnitude of Friday night through the bond. I had — I had thought I knew what the kiss was going to feel like. I did not know. The Rhett-channel detonated for Rhett. Each channel detonates for its own wolf. My channel — the one between me and her — has been damped for ten weeks at a register I had been calling baseline, and the baseline was — wrong. The baseline was the damping. The actual register, when the damping releases, is —

It is fire.

Her hand on my face is — her hand on my face. And the bond between her hand and my face is — every nerve I have, lit. Not painful. The opposite. Lit in a register that means *you have been waiting for this for ten weeks and the waiting is over and the over is what your body has been built for.*

She moves her face toward mine.

I close the last two inches.

---

The kiss is not slow.

The kiss is — the kiss is what my body has been pulling toward for ten weeks. The kiss is fire. Her mouth on mine is hot. My mouth on hers is hot. We are pressed together at every point a sitting position allows for, and the pressing is — not enough. I bring my hands up — to her face, to her hair, to the back of her neck — and I pull her closer. She comes closer. She makes a sound in her throat that is not a sigh and not a moan and is, specifically, the sound of a wolf who has wanted this and has just gotten it. The sound goes through me like a current. I deepen the kiss. She lets me. She — she pushes back. Her hand fists in the front of my shirt. She pulls.

I had been afraid, for ten weeks, that my version of this would be too much. I had watched my brothers kiss their hypothetical mates in my head and had been afraid that my hypothetical kiss would be — desperate, possessive, more than the moment could hold. I had thought, when the moment came, that I would have to manage myself.

I am not managing myself.

I am not managing because Sera is — Sera is meeting me.

She is kissing me at the same intensity I am kissing her. Her hands are gripping my shirt with the same force I am gripping her face. Her body is leaning into mine with the same lean I am giving back. We are not — there is no managing happening between us. There is only — match. The match is — both of us at fire. Both of us at the volume the bond is at. Both of us, after ten weeks of careful distance and disciplined wanting, finally letting the bond do what the bond has been pulling toward.

She breaks the kiss to breathe.

She does not pull away. Her forehead comes to mine. She is breathing hard. I am breathing hard. The bond is at a volume that is going to take days to settle from. My hands are still in her hair. Her hand is still in my shirt.

"Dante."

"Yeah."

"That was — "

"Yeah."

"I — "

"I know."

She kisses me again.

The second kiss is — different from the first. The first was the *finally.* The second is the *yes.* The second is slower because the urgency has had its first satisfaction and the urgency can now allow itself a moment of paying attention. I pay attention. I taste her. Her mouth is — her mouth is salt from the run and sweet underneath that and warm and her, specifically her, the wolf I have been loving in my body for ten weeks and tasting now for the first time. I memorize the taste. The memorizing is going to be — the memorizing is going to be a thing I do for the rest of my life.

She breaks the second kiss too.

This time she leans her forehead against mine for a long time. We breathe. Our hands settle — her hand on my shoulder, my hand on the back of her neck. The bond is — calming. Not back to its old register. To a new register. The new register is what my channel sounds like when it is no longer damped.

The new register is — it is loud.

It is louder than I had expected.

I am going to have to live inside it.