His Forbidden Human

Chapter 3: The Morning After

Maya woke up and forgot where she was for exactly four seconds.

Then it all came back.

Forest. Running. Eyes in the dark. A stranger who wasn't entirely human telling her she couldn't go home.

Right.

She sat up slowly. The room was small and plain — just a bed, a wooden dresser, curtains that were doing their best against the early morning light. No pictures on the walls. Nothing personal. Like a room that had been prepared for someone who was never supposed to stay long.

She checked her phone out of habit. Still dead. Of course.

She unlocked the door and stood in the hallway for a moment, listening. The house was quiet. Not the tense, something-is-wrong kind of quiet. Just still. Like it had been standing here long enough that silence was comfortable.

She found the bathroom, splashed water on her face, stared at herself in the mirror for longer than necessary. Same face. Same dark circles. Just a regular person who had apparently stumbled into something she had no business being part of.

Great.

She followed the smell of coffee downstairs.

Ethan was already in the kitchen. He was standing at the stove with his back to her, and for one unguarded second Maya just stood in the doorway and noticed things she hadn't had time to notice last night. How he moved like every action was deliberate. How the kitchen looked actually lived in — a pan on the stove, a mug already on the counter, a jacket thrown over one of the chairs. How strange it was that someone like him just... had a house. With a coffee maker. With eggs apparently, because that's what he was making.

"You sleep?" he asked, without turning around.

"Some." She pulled out a chair and sat. "You knew I was there."

"I heard you on the stairs."

"I was trying to be quiet."

"I know." He set a mug in front of her. Black coffee. She didn't comment on the fact that he didn't ask how she took it. "How's your ankle?"

She blinked. "My ankle is fine."

"You were favoring your left side last night."

She had twisted it, actually. Barely. She hadn't even fully registered it until this moment. "It's fine," she said again, wrapping her hands around the mug.

He went back to the stove. She watched him for a moment, trying to figure out how to say what she needed to say.

"I have class at ten," she said finally.

"Cancel it."

"I can't just—"

"You can." He turned around this time, leaning back against the counter with his arms crossed, holding his own mug. He looked like he'd been awake for hours. Probably had been. "One day, Maya. I need one day to figure out how much they know about you."

"They." She said it carefully. "The ones from last night."

"They're called the Hollow Pack." Something shifted in his voice when he said it. Not fear exactly. Something older. "They're not from here. They've been moving through the territory for the last few weeks and they're looking for something." He paused. "Or someone."

"And you think that someone is me."

"I don't know yet. That's the problem."

Maya stared at her coffee. It was good coffee, which felt weirdly significant. Like a person who made good coffee couldn't be entirely dangerous. She was aware that was not logical.

"What are you?" she asked. "I mean — I get the general picture. But last night you said they weren't your pack. So you have a pack."

"Had."

The word landed flat.

She looked up. His expression was the same as always — controlled, unreadable — but something about the way he'd said it made her not push further.

"Okay," she said. "So you're — what. On your own?"

"Something like that."

"And you just live here. In the middle of the woods. By yourself."

"Yes."

"And last night you just happened to be in the right place—"

"I heard you." He said it simply. "I heard you from half a mile away. The way you were running — something was wrong. So I found you."

Maya was quiet for a moment.

"That's either very reassuring or very unsettling," she said.

"Probably both."

She almost smiled. Didn't quite get there. "I want to call my roommate. She's going to think I'm dead."

He reached into a drawer and pulled out a phone — old, basic, the kind people stopped using years ago — and slid it across the table. "Don't tell her where you are."

"What do I tell her?"

"That you stayed at a friend's."

"She's going to ask which friend."

"Tell her a name. Any name."

Maya picked up the phone. "You're asking me to lie to my best friend."

"I'm asking you to keep her safe," he said. "If she doesn't know, they can't use her to get to you."

That landed differently than she expected.

She dialed.

Jess picked up on the second ring, already mid-panic, words tumbling over each other about hospitals and police and how could you not tell me — and Maya talked her down slowly, steadily, said she was fine, said she'd stayed at a friend's, said she'd explain later. Jess didn't believe her, not entirely, but she stopped threatening to file a missing persons report, which was the important part.

When she hung up, Ethan was watching her.

"She's not going to drop it," Maya said.

"She doesn't need to drop it. She just needs to stay out of the forest."

Maya set the phone down. Outside the window, the trees were bright with morning light — completely ordinary, completely still. Nothing like last night.

"One day," she said.

"One day."

"And then you tell me everything. Not the short version. Not the version where you decide what I can handle." She met his eyes. "Everything."

He held her gaze for a moment that went on slightly too long.

"Okay," he said.

She nodded. Picked up her coffee.

Neither of them said anything for a while after that. The eggs were done. He put a plate in front of her without asking. She ate without arguing.

It was, all things considered, a very strange morning.

But the coffee really was good.

And somehow, sitting in a werewolf's kitchen at eight in the morning, that felt like the only thing she could actually hold onto.

So she did.