Page 33 of Untamed

Fear turns defensive before I get hold of it. “I’ve spent every fucking day trying to give you choices, Orion. I’m scared because somebody ended up with a broken arm while you were still figuring out what your body was doing.” He gets to his feet so fast the books tip sideways beside him, and I set the mug down before I crush the handle.

“You think I’m not scared? I don’t know why it happens faster some days. I don’t know why sometimes I can feel the shift coming and sometimes I’m already halfway through it before I know what the fuck is happening.” Orion shoves the books away from his knee and faces me across the room. “You keep asking me for an answer I don’t have.”

“I watched you put a man on the ground when you knew I wasn’t hurt.” My voice rises with his despite every reason it shouldn’t. “You felt the bond. You knew I wasn’t afraid, and you knew he never touched me. That’s what scares me.” I get to my feet too, keeping the table between us.

“I know what I did. I know all of that.” Orion drags both hands through his hair and lets them fall. “I can’t give you an answer I don’t have just because you’re scared.” His voice roughens. “You think I’m not scared too?”

I should stop there. Instead I hear myself say, “Sometimes it feels like you hide in the bear every time being human gets too difficult.” The words sound wrong the second they leave my mouth, and I hear the Collective in my own voice before I can take them back.

Orion goes completely still, not angry at first but hurt. The hurt disappears behind something harder as his jaw locks and his shoulders square toward me. “You sound like them.”

Then he shoves me. My back slams into the edge of the table and dishes jump behind me, one hitting the floor and breaking. Pain shoots through my spine as Orion comes forward again, not fully shifted but close enough that his shoulders have gone tight and his pupils are blown wide. My body reacts before I can think past it, and I grab his wrists. “Back off,” he snarls, jerking against my grip.

I don’t. “Let go,” he says again, twisting harder. I hold on, and we slam into the wall between the kitchen and hall hard enough to crack the drywall. One of his claws breaks through and rakes across my shoulder, opening four hot lines down my arm. I swear and shove him back, but Orion comes off the wall toward me again and my fist moves before I decide whether I’m going to use it.

My fist catches his mouth and snaps his head back. Blood appears along Orion’s lower lip, and we both freeze before pulling apart. His eyes go wide while I let go of his wrists, and he steps backward until his spine hits the wall. I move the other direction with one hand clamped over my shoulder as blood runs between my fingers. Shock floods the bond from both directions until I can’t separate his from mine.

I let my hands fall first. “I’m sorry.” Orion says nothing, his chest still rising too fast against the wall, so I look down at the blood on my hand instead of trying to cross the room. “I’m still scared, and I still need to know when you’re disappearing on me. But what I said was wrong.”

“You sounded like them.” Orion’s claws retract slowly as he says it, and after a few seconds he slides down the wall with blood bright on his lower lip. He doesn’t look away from me even after he reaches the floor.

I sit across from him instead of moving closer. “I know.” My shoulder throbs beneath my hand, but I keep the distance he asked for. “I kept pushing after you told me what the questions were doing to you. I made it worse, and I’m sorry.”

Orion wipes blood from his lip with the back of his hand before he speaks again. “After the trial, they questioned me while I was still drugged. They asked why I shifted, why I attacked, whether I knew what I was doing. Every time I said I was scared, they wrote down unstable, and if I said I felt guilty about hurting somebody, they called it manipulation.” His hands flex against his knees. “Then they started asking what I felt right before a shift. What sounds made it worse. What touch I couldn’t stand. What made me panic.”

My stomach turns before he finishes. “And they used it.” I hate how obvious the answer is even before he confirms it, because I can already see the pattern in every report we’ve read.

Orion looks at me without blinking. “Every answer became instructions.” His hands stay open on his knees now, the claws gone even though the anger hasn’t disappeared from the bond.

I keep my own hands open where he can see them because reaching for him now would only make this about what I need. “You never have to hand me every memory, but I need something I can understand before we get here again.”

Orion’s eyes move to the cracked wall. His mouth tightens before he finally looks back at me. “Like what?”

I give him the simplest versions I can. “Back off. Not now. I’m losing control. Pick one, pick something else, I don’t care. You don’t have to explain it. I just need to know when to stop.” My voice stays level this time, with no demand underneath it.

Orion’s eyes stay on mine. “And if I tell you to back off, you stop even if you think I’m avoiding the question?” His hands curl once against his knees before relaxing again.

I nod once. “If you tell me to back off, I back off.” I don’t add conditions or ask him to make me understand first.

He looks toward the cracked wall for a long moment before speaking. “Then back off.” The words come out quiet, but there’s nothing uncertain about them.

“Okay.” I answer just as plainly and stay exactly where I am. The distance between us remains until he chooses to change it.

The anger is still there when we run out of words. We stay where we are for a while before I get up and rinse the blood from my shoulder without asking Orion to help. I sweep the broken dish into a pile while he watches me through the reflection in the dark kitchen window, then he picks up the books he knocked over and stacks them beside the den again. Neither of us speaks until my shoulder has stopped bleeding through the towel pressed against it.

Orion crosses the kitchen first and stops several feet away, rubbing one thumb over the heel of his opposite hand. “My head’s too loud. I need grounding.” He doesn’t come any closer after saying it.

I leave the space between us open instead of reaching for him. My hands stay loose on my thighs while I wait for him to look at me. “For you?”

His jaw tightens. “Yes. For me.” I open my knees and let him decide how close to come, and Orion lowers himself to the floor between them slowly with one hand resting against my thigh before his cheek follows. He doesn’t touch me anywhere else. I turn one hand palm-up beside my leg and wait until he takes my wrist and places my hand in his hair.

I start the same slow motion I know he likes, drawing my fingers from his temple through the curls at the back of his head before beginning again. His shoulders stay high for the first few passes, then gradually drop while his breathing evens against my thigh. The bond quiets with him, and for a while nothing else changes. When his fingers begin tracing absent circles against my knee, I assume it’s another grounding motion until his hand slides higher and want warms through the bond.

Orion looks up at me without moving his hand any farther. “I want more.” His fingers stay where they are against my knee instead of sliding higher.

I keep my hand in his hair and don’t move anywhere else. “You want to keep going?” I watch his face rather than relying on the want in the bond to answer for him.

His answer comes without hesitation. “Yes.” He shifts closer only after he says it.