The wolfsbane burned through me for three days.
I slept through most of it. When I woke, the cabin was always dim, the curtains drawn, and Elio was always somewhere nearby. Not hovering. Just there. I'd open my eyes and see him sitting in the chair by the window, or standing at the counter with his back to me, or hear his footsteps outside chopping wood.
He never asked how I felt. He just left water on the table beside the couch. Soup in a bowl that was still warm when I reached for it. A blanket tucked around my shoulders while I slept.
On the third night, I woke to the sound of pacing.
It was louder than before. Faster. The floorboards creaked under his weight. Back and forth. Back and forth. I lay still and listened. There was something frantic in the rhythm, like he was trying to walk off something he couldn't name.
I sat up. My body ached, but the searing pain in my chest was gone. I stood and walked to the hallway. The door to his room was open a crack. I could see him through the gap.
He was pacing with his hands in his hair, his shoulders tight. His jaw was clenched so hard I could see the muscle jumping. He stopped suddenly, pressed his palms flat against the wall, and stood there with his head bowed.
I should have gone back to the couch. I didn't.
I pushed the door open.
He turned. His eyes met mine. For just a second — maybe less — they flashed gold.
Not the warm amber of a regular wolf. Gold. Bright and unmistakable and entirely wrong for someone who was supposed to be a pack warrior.
I froze.
The gold faded. His eyes returned to their usual dark brown. He dropped his hands from the wall and straightened, his face carefully blank.
"You should be resting," he said.
I didn't move. "Your eyes."
"Layla—"
"They were gold."
He didn't deny it. He just stood there, watching me with an expression I couldn't read.
"I saw them in the kitchen too," I said quietly. "When you carried me out. I thought I imagined it."
He exhaled slowly. "You didn't."
"What are you?"
The question hung in the air between us. He didn't answer right away. He crossed the room and sat down on the edge of the bed, his hands folded between his knees. He looked tired. More tired than I'd ever seen him.
"I'll tell you," he said finally. "But not tonight. You're not strong enough yet."
"I'm strong enough to know the truth."
"No," he said. "You're not."
It should have made me angry. It didn't. There was something in his voice — not condescension, but a kind of careful gentleness — that told me he wasn't trying to protect himself. He was trying to protect me.
I sat down beside him. The bed dipped under my weight. We didn't touch, but I could feel the heat radiating off him.
"Why did you help me?" I asked.
He looked at me then. Really looked at me. "Because no one else did."
The words landed like a punch. Not cruel. Just true.
I wanted to ask more. I wanted to ask everything. But I was so tired. The wolfsbane had drained me in ways I didn't have words for yet.
"Go back to sleep," Elio said. "I'll still be here in the morning."
I stood and walked to the door. At the threshold, I stopped and looked back.
"Thank you," I said.
He didn't answer. He just nodded.
The weeks that followed were quiet.
Elio made coffee every morning. Two cups. We drank them standing at the counter, not quite looking at each other. He cooked simple meals. I ate them without complaint. At night, we sat in the main room — him in the chair by the window, me on the couch — and talked about nothing important. Pack logistics. Supply runs. The weather.
But sometimes the conversation drifted.
One night, I told him about the open-mic nights at the bar in town. How I used to perform every Thursday before everything fell apart. How the songs I wrote during the Conor years were all minor keys and unfinished bridges.
"You should go back," Elio said.
I shook my head. "I don't think I can."
"Why not?"
"Because I don't know what I'd sing about now."
He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "Maybe that's the point."
I looked at him. He was watching me with that same steady expression he always wore. Like he could see something in me I couldn't see yet.
Another night, I asked him about the scar on his jaw.
"Training accident," he said.
I didn't believe him. But I didn't push.
Slowly, something inside me began to shift.
My wolf. The presence I'd felt for three minutes on the night of the rejection. She wasn't gone. She was waking.
It started small. A flicker of warmth in my chest when Elio walked into the room. A faint hum beneath my ribs when he spoke my name. At first, I thought I was imagining it. Then it happened again. And again.
One morning, I woke to find Elio outside chopping wood. I stood at the window and watched him. The rhythm of the axe. The way his shoulders moved. The steam rising off his skin in the cold air.
My wolf stirred. Not a flicker. A roll. Deep and powerful and unmistakable.
I pressed my hand to my chest. My heart was racing.
She was there. She was real. And she was responding to him.
I didn't tell him. I was afraid that naming it would make it stop. Or worse — that it would force a conversation I wasn't ready to have.
But the truth was already forming, quiet and undeniable.
My wolf didn't wake for Conor. She woke for Elio.
And I had no idea what that meant.
