His Forbidden Human

Chapter 5: The Thing About Wolves

On the third night, Maya couldn't sleep again.

This was becoming a pattern she didn't love.

She lay on her back staring at the ceiling, listening to the house settle around her, counting the reasons she should be more scared than she was. The list was long. Objectively, genuinely long. There were things in the forest that knew her scent. She was staying in a house with someone who turned into — she still hadn't asked exactly what that looked like and she wasn't sure she was ready to — and her entire normal life was sitting on pause while she waited for a danger she couldn't see to pass.

She should be terrified.

She was, underneath everything. She could feel it there, a low hum behind her ribs.

But there was something else too. Something she didn't have a clean word for. Like a door she hadn't known existed had been opened, and even though everything behind it was dark and uncertain, it was still a door. Still something new.

She gave up on sleep around two and went downstairs.

Ethan was in the living room.

He was sitting on the floor — not the couch, the floor — with his back against the coffee table, reading something. A real book, paper and everything. He looked up when she appeared in the doorway, unsurprised, and she remembered he'd heard her on the stairs again.

"Can't sleep," she said. Not a question.

"I don't sleep much," he said.

She came and sat on the couch above him. He didn't move. She pulled her knees up to her chest and looked at the book in his hands — old, thick, no title visible on the spine.

"What are you reading?"

He held it up so she could see the cover. It was in a language she didn't recognize.

"What language is that?"

"Old Norse."

She stared at him. "You read Old Norse."

"When you have enough time, you pick things up."

"How much time are we talking about?"

He set the book down. Looked at her with that steady, considering expression that she was starting to be able to read, a little. This one meant he was deciding how much to say.

"Werewolves age differently than humans," he said. "Slower. Much slower, after the first change."

Maya was quiet for a moment. "How old are you?"

"In years that would mean something to you?" He paused. "Older than I look."

"That's not an answer."

"No," he agreed. "It's not."

She decided not to push it. Filed it away with the other things. "Does it — does the change hurt?"

The question came out before she'd fully decided to ask it. She watched him, wondering if he'd shut it down.

He didn't.

"The first time," he said. "After that it's just — a thing that happens. Like breathing."

"What does it feel like?"

He thought about it. Actually thought, which she appreciated.

"Like being very, very awake," he said finally. "Like every sense you have is turned up so high that the world is almost too much. Colors are different. Sounds are different." He paused. "You can feel things from miles away. A heartbeat. A footstep. The way the air changes when something is afraid."

Maya realized her own heartbeat had picked up slightly.

"You can feel that, can't you," she said. "Right now."

He looked at her. "Yes."

"That's—" She stopped. "That should be more uncomfortable than it is."

"Most humans find it very uncomfortable."

"I'm not most humans apparently." She thought of what he'd said on the porch. That you know of. She'd been turning it over for two days and getting nowhere. "Can you tell anything from it? From someone's heartbeat?"

"Emotion, mostly. Fear. Anger." He tilted his head slightly. "Honesty."

"Honesty?"

"When someone lies, their heart does something. A hesitation. A speed-up. Different for everyone, but always something."

Maya absorbed this. "So you always know when people are lying."

"Usually."

"That must be very annoying."

Something genuine crossed his face. There and gone. "You have no idea."

She laughed. She hadn't meant to. It came out before she could stop it — short, surprised — and she pressed her lips together quickly. But it was too late. He'd heard it. Obviously.

He was looking at her differently now. Not the measuring look. Something quieter.

"Sorry," she said, for no good reason.

"Don't be." He picked up his book again, which she understood meant the conversation was winding down, but his voice was different when he spoke again. Less careful. "You ask different questions than most people."

"What do most people ask?"

"If I bite. Whether the moon thing is real. If I know other — " He paused. "Other things like me."

"Those are all reasonable questions."

"They are."

"Do you bite?"

"Not without reason."

"Is the moon thing real?"

"Partially. The full moon makes it harder to hold the change back. It's not automatic. That's a myth."

"Do you know other things like you?"

The quiet that followed this one was different from the others.

"I did," he said.

She didn't ask anything else after that.

She sat on the couch and he sat on the floor and the house was quiet and outside the trees were still and dark and the thing that was hunting her was somewhere in all that darkness but right now, in this room, with this strange man and his strange book and his too-honest answers, she felt something she hadn't expected to feel since the night all this started.

Safe.

Not perfectly. Not without question.

But enough.

She fell asleep on the couch sometime after three. She didn't remember it happening.

When she woke up in the morning there was a blanket over her that hadn't been there before, and Ethan was gone from the floor, and the book was closed on the coffee table.

She stared at the ceiling for a long time.

Then she got up and made the coffee, because some things, at least, stayed the same.