Page 27 of Untamed

I grab the shirt to move it and smear the blood farther across the cotton. It catches the hoodie next, then the blanket, until everything I stole because it smelled like Arlo carries wet fur, mud, and coyote blood instead. My throat closes. I don’t know how to make the room smell safe again without touching more of it.

Footsteps slow outside, and Arlo stops on the other side of the door without touching the knob. I can hear him shift his weight once on the hallway floorboards, then go still. For several seconds, I can hear him breathing. He doesn’t ask me to open the door or tell me what we need to discuss. Eventually his footsteps fade toward the kitchen, and I keep listening until I can’t hear them anymore.

I don’t lose time again. I know every second I spend staring at the blood drying on my hands. I hear Arlo fill the kettle, open a cabinet, and drag something heavy across the back door to block it until morning. When I finally force myself into the bathroom, I scrub until the water runs clear.

A dark line stays under one nail. I dig at it until the skin around the cuticle starts to split, then stop when Arlo’s worry sharpens through the bond from the other room. When I come into the living room, he has the same book open again, but his eyes aren’t moving over the page. He closes it as soon as he sees me and leaves both hands where I can see them.

I stop between Arlo’s knees with my hands still shaking and force them open where I can see them. “I need quiet.” The request comes out rough, but at least it comes out before I disappear into the den again.

Arlo studies my face instead of asking for more than I can give. He turns one hand palm-up beside his thigh and leaves the choice with me. “Come here when you’re ready.”

I lower myself to my knees and lean against him first. Only after my cheek rests against his thigh do his fingers settle into my hair. I wait there while his fingers start the same slow path through my curls they’ve used before, and some of the shaking leaves my hands. The room stays quiet around us except for his breathing and the faint hum of the refrigerator from the kitchen.

Arlo’s fingers keep moving through my hair at the same slow pace. He doesn’t change the pressure when another tremor runs through my hands. “You set the pace. I’m staying right here.”

The contact stays slow and predictable. His hand remains in my curls, heavy enough that I always know where it is, and when my breathing starts to catch he purrs rather than filling the room with questions. The kitchen still comes back in pieces: blood in the sink, the broken chair, the open door. Each time it does, the pressure of his hand and the vibration in his chest pull the living room back into focus.

I know where I am now. Arlo’s thigh is warm beneath my cheek, his wrist is in my hand, and his pulse keeps beating against my fingers every time the kitchen tries to come back. By the time the pressure behind my eyes eases enough that I can think around it, I’m still holding his wrist, but I’m no longer counting every beat like one might disappear.

He doesn’t ask whether it helped. We stay there until the cold floor under my knees starts feeling like an ordinary discomfort again. When my breathing finally evens out, Arlo asks once whether I want to talk about the blackout. I tell him no, and he accepts the boundary without pretending the problem disappears with it.

I keep hold of his wrist anyway. His pulse is too fast, and I tell him I can feel that he’s scared. “I am,” he says. “You lost time and something died. I need to understand that before it happens again. I’m not scared of you sitting here with me.”

The coyote is still dead, and I still can’t remember killing it. Arlo is alive, untouched by whatever happened while I was gone. Every time my mind tries to put Arlo’s blood in the missing stretch, I look at the clean skin of his throat and the hand still resting against mine.

My stomach twists, but Arlo doesn’t take back what he said. His thumb stays against the back of my hand while the kitchen sink and the coyote remain exactly what they were. After a while, Arlo asks, “Do you want me close tonight?”

I stand instead of answering and head down the hall. He follows at a distance that leaves me room to change my mind, and when I stop at the den, he stops outside it. The room smells wrong. Blood stains one corner of the blanket and two of his shirts. The chair is still under the knob, the desk cuts the room in half, and the dresser blocks most of the window. Arlo looks at all of it without crossing the threshold.

Nobody has crossed this threshold since I made the room mine. My hand stays on the knob for several seconds while Arlo waits in the hall without moving toward me. When I push the door wider and step aside, he still waits for me to make room before he comes any closer.

Arlo stays outside the room, one hand loose at his side and the other resting against the hall wall. “You want me in there?”

“Yes. I want you in the room.” I push the door a little wider and step back from the threshold. The movement leaves enough space for him to enter without brushing against me.

He waits until I move back far enough to make room, then comes inside. He doesn’t touch the mug, the shirts, the chair, or anything else I moved. With him standing there, I can hear his breathing over the pipes in the wall, and my shoulders stay down.

I crawl into the center of the blankets and let the shift come while he remains where I can see him. This time I feel the entire shift. My hands broaden against the floor as claws push through, the shirt tearing across my back while my body grows heavier. The floorboards creak beneath me when the change finishes.

Arlo stays near the wall. He’s close enough that I can reach him, but he stays where I left him. I circle once and shove the bloodstained edge of the blanket away with my nose. The black hoodie still smells mostly like him, so I lower myself around it and tuck my muzzle into the fabric.

I try settling with him against the wall, but my attention keeps dragging back to the empty stretch of floor between us. I reach out with one paw and hook it carefully around his waist, keeping my claws away from his skin.

Arlo catches himself against the dresser and looks at the paw hooked around his waist. “All right. I’m coming.” He waits until my grip loosens enough for him to move without fighting it.

He steps over the rug and lets me draw him the rest of the way. There’s barely enough room for him beside my chest, and he has to work one leg around the desk before he can sit without knocking anything over. He doesn’t comment on the stolen clothes or the blood on them.

When he settles, I curl around him and put one heavy paw across his hips. His back presses into my belly, and his head fits beneath my jaw. Leather and coffee fill my nose when I tuck him closer, dulling the coyote blood soaked into the blanket underneath us.

Arlo closes one hand around the fur above my paw and stays beneath its weight. After a while he says, “We’ll clean the room tomorrow. Not tonight.” I huff into his hair and feel the curls move beneath my breath. His thumb strokes once through the fur at my wrist, then again, slow enough that I stop listening for anything outside the room. We stay there until the coyote is no longer the first thing I smell every time I breathe.

Chapter Sixteen

Arlo

The mark on Orion’s finger is almost gone. His paw is draped over my thigh, the fading crescent sitting beneath my hand where the fur thins at the edge of the pad. Three days ago the temporary bond felt warm and obvious between us. This morning I have to reach for it while Orion sleeps beside me in the den he rebuilt out of half my house. Graves will notice the difference too.

I’m wide awake after that. I keep my hand where it is until Orion’s ear twitches beneath the fur. “Morning.”