His Forbidden Human

Chapter 13: Three Days

The first day after the meeting, Ethan disappeared into the back room with Marcus for four hours.

Maya knew because she counted. Not obsessively. Just — she was aware of the time in the way you became aware of things when you had too much of it and not enough to fill it with.

Cole kept her company without making it obvious that was what he was doing. He showed up at ten with pastries from somewhere in town and spread them on the kitchen table and talked about everything except the meeting, which she understood was a kindness.

"How long have you known Ethan?" she asked, somewhere around the second pastry.

"Since we were kids. Eight, maybe nine." Cole leaned back in his chair. "He was serious even then. The kind of kid who thought before he spoke, which made the rest of us look feral by comparison."

"Were you feral?"

"James was feral. I was just enthusiastic." He said the name easily, then caught himself. A small shift in his expression. "You know about James."

"Ethan told me last night."

Cole looked at his coffee. "He told you."

"Yes."

"He doesn't — " Cole stopped. "He doesn't talk about it. To anyone. In three years I think I've had maybe two conversations with him about what happened." He looked at her with something careful in his face. "He told you after one week."

Maya didn't know what to say to that so she said nothing.

Cole nodded slowly, like she'd answered something anyway.

"Lena was my sister," he said quietly. "Half sister, technically. Different mothers, same father. But she was — she was mine." He picked up his pastry and put it down again. "After it happened I wanted to burn everything down. Rennick, the other pack, all of it. Ethan was the one who stopped me from doing something I couldn't take back."

"Even though he was—"

"Even though he was the most destroyed of all of us, yeah." Cole looked at the window. "That's the thing about Ethan. He falls apart completely on the inside and holds everything together on the outside." He paused. "I think you might be the first person in a long time who's seen past the outside part."

Maya looked at the table.

"I don't know what I've seen," she said honestly.

"That's probably the right answer."

They ate the rest of the pastries in a comfortable quiet.

---

The terms came back from Rennick that afternoon.

Ethan read through them at the kitchen table with a focused stillness that reminded her of the maps — methodical, thorough, giving nothing away. Marcus sat across from him, and they went through it together, quietly, occasionally pausing to exchange looks that communicated things she didn't have the context for yet.

She sat at the end of the table and read her own copy.

It was detailed. More detailed than she'd expected — specific language about what Ethan's role would be, what authority he'd hold, what decisions required agreement between both of them. It read less like a subordination and more like a partnership with guardrails.

The section about her was shorter. Her presence at the dissolution. Her verbal consent. A clause that said once the agreement was dissolved she would be formally recognized as off-limits to any pack operating in the territory — a protection she hadn't known you could have until she had it.

She read that part twice.

"This clause," she said, pointing to it. "Off-limits. What does that actually mean in practice?"

Ethan looked over. "It means any pack that touches you answers to the territory alpha. It's a declaration." He paused. "It carries weight."

"Even with the Hollow Pack?"

"It won't stop them immediately. But it puts them in direct conflict with Rennick's authority, which means they can't operate quietly anymore." He met her eyes. "It makes you harder to get to."

"But not impossible."

"Not impossible," he said. "I won't lie to you about that."

She appreciated that. She always appreciated that.

"Sign it," she said.

He looked at her.

"The terms are fair," she said. "I read them. You've been alone out here for three years because you were grieving and you needed to be, and now you don't need to be anymore." She held his gaze. "Sign it."

Something moved through his expression.

"You've been here twelve days," he said.

"I know."

"You don't — you barely know me."

"I know enough." She looked at the papers. "I know you make good coffee and you put blankets on people who fall asleep on your couch and you plan three exit strategies before walking into a difficult room." She looked back at him. "I know you told me about Lena and James last night and I know what that cost you." She paused. "Sign it, Ethan."

The kitchen was quiet.

Marcus was looking very carefully at the wall.

Ethan looked at the papers for a long moment. Then he picked up the pen.

He signed.

---

The second day was quieter.

Rennick's people came by in the morning to collect the signed terms and left without ceremony. Ethan went for a run — an actual run, she assumed, not whatever a werewolf run looked like, though she didn't ask — and came back steadier than he'd left.

Maya spent the afternoon on the back porch with her phone, which Ethan had charged for her on the second day. She had seventeen messages from Jess, four from a classmate about the assignment she'd missed, and one from her mother asking if she was coming home for the weekend.

She sat with the phone in her hands for a long time.

Her life was right there. Sitting in her palm, small and rectangular and completely normal. Classes and assignments and a best friend who worried about her and a mother who called on Sundays. A life that had been on pause for almost two weeks.

She could feel how much she'd changed in those two weeks.

She wasn't sure the life in her palm had left room for that.

She texted Jess back. Long message, vague on details, specific on I'm okay and I'll explain when I can. Jess responded in approximately thirty seconds with a string of messages that escalated from relief to fury to relief again.

Maya smiled at her phone.

Ethan appeared in the doorway behind her. She heard him before she saw him.

"Your friend?" he asked.

"Jess. She's — a lot. In the best way."

He came and leaned against the door frame. Not sitting. Not leaving.

"You're thinking about going back," he said.

It wasn't an accusation.

"I live there," she said. "I have a life there."

"I know."

She looked at the trees. "After tomorrow. After the dissolution." She paused. "I go back."

"Yes."

"And what happens with — " She stopped. Tried again. "The Hollow Pack isn't gone yet."

"No. But you'll have the protection clause. And I'll—" He paused. "I'll be paying attention."

She turned to look at him. He was looking at the trees, profile to her, jaw set in that way of his.

"You'll be paying attention," she repeated.

"You're not disappearing from my world just because you go back to yours," he said. Simple. Like it was already decided.

She turned back to the trees.

Something loosened in her chest. Something she hadn't realized had been tight.

"Okay," she said.

They stayed on the porch until the light went.

---

The third day, she packed her bag.

It didn't take long. She hadn't brought much. She set it by the door and stood in the hallway of the house that had been hers for almost two weeks and looked at the kitchen, the stairs, the window with the tree line visible through it.

She thought about the girl who had run through that forest. Who had hit a solid chest in the dark and looked up at gold eyes and somehow, against every reasonable instinct, followed a stranger into the trees.

She was still that girl.

She was also, now, someone else.

Cole arrived at ten. Marcus at ten fifteen. They gathered in the kitchen one more time, all four of them, and drank coffee and didn't talk about what was coming and talked about everything else instead.

At noon, they drove back to the lodge.

And somewhere in the back of Maya's mind, quiet and persistent, a question had been forming for three days that she hadn't let herself ask yet.

What happened after after?

She looked at the trees going by outside the window.

She didn't have an answer.

But for the first time in almost two weeks, she thought she might want one.

That felt like something.

She held onto it as the lodge appeared through the trees.

She was ready.