Page 44 of Untamed

I step closer until my forehead nearly touches his muzzle. “You think I spent three years alone because I wanted easy?” My voice shakes now, and I let it. “I chose you. You get to be angry. You get to be scared. You get to hate every fucking person behind that fence. You do not get to decide I’d be better off if you were dead.”

“Halt!”

The shout cracks through the trees, and Orion’s head jerks toward the sound. Three guards come into view between the trunks with rifles already raised and their lights fixed on us. The lead guard sees how close Orion is to the marked perimeter and lifts his weapon another inch.

“Step away from the specimen, Maddox!”

I turn without moving out of Orion’s path. My aura is already pushing out of me, the pressure of it rolling through the clearing hard enough that the nearest rifle dips before the guard catches himself.

“He’s under control. Back off.”

“He’s in a restricted zone.”

“And I am standing between him and the fence.” I keep one hand buried in Orion’s chest fur while I face them. “Nobody fires.”

“We have orders if the animal breaches perimeter.”

“If he goes down and I am still standing, you will wish you took me with him.”

The lead guard’s eyes cut from me to Orion and back again. Sweat shines at his temple despite the cold, and behind him one of the other guards shifts his grip on his weapon before looking suddenly interested in the ground. For several long seconds, no one moves. Then the lead guard swears under his breath and motions the others back.

I don’t watch them leave. The moment their lights swing away, I turn back to Orion and feel the fight drain out of him so quickly that it scares me more than the fence did. His shoulders sag, a tremor runs through the bear from neck to haunches, and then the shift catches him. Bones pull inward and fur disappears until he hits his knees naked in the dirt, one hand slapping down to keep himself upright.

I catch him as he starts to fold, one arm going around his shoulders while Orion looks up at me once and his face crumples.

“I could feel it,” he says, the words breaking around his breath. “Every time they look at you, they’re looking at a hostage. I saw you with the Doctor. I saw what this is doing to you.” His fingers knot in the side of my pants. “It seemed simpler to remove the problem.”

Anger flashes so hot through me that my vision tightens. “Do not call yourself the problem.”

He tries to look away, but I catch a fistful of his hair and bring his face back to mine, not hard enough to hurt him, only enough that he can’t disappear while I’m talking. “You are the one part of this place I chose. You do not get to die for me because the Collective taught you sacrifice is the only useful thing you can offer.”

His mouth opens, but nothing comes out. Then he breaks against me, the first sob barely making a sound before the next one does. I pull him into my chest and sit with him in the dirt while the fence hums a few yards away and the guards pretend they aren’t still watching from the trees.

Violence has always been easier for me because it gives me something solid to fight. I can get between Orion and a gun, tear an implant out with a kitchen knife, or put my hands around a throat if somebody comes for him. There is nothing physical to stop when he decides the kindest thing he can do is disappear, so I hold him until his breathing no longer tears at his chest.

When I finally stand, I pull him up with me. His knees buckle once, and I catch his arm, holding on until he steadies and takes his weight back. He keeps hold of my wrist for another second before letting go.

We walk home together without talking. Pine needles stick to the soles of my feet, Orion shivers beside me, and every few steps the bond gives me a small pulse of him checking that I’m still there. I answer every time. By the time we reach the house, his legs have stopped shaking.

The den waits in the bedroom, all rugs and stolen clothes and the faint animal heat that has soaked into everything. I sit on the edge of the mattress to drag dirt from my feet, and Orion shifts while I’m still brushing pine needles from one heel. The bear fills the room, then climbs onto the bed, circles once, and drops his weight around me so completely that I end up half buried in fur. His chest presses against my back, one huge paw lands across my thigh, and a low grunt rolls through him and vibrates into my ribs.

The bond opens around one clear plea for me to stay.

I turn enough to bury my hand in the thick fur at his neck. “Yeah,” I whisper. “I’m staying.”

Chapter Twenty-five

Orion

Morning comes with Arlo still trapped against me. He’s asleep when I wake, and I stay bear long enough to listen to his breathing, slow and even beneath the weight of my chest. The memory of the perimeter sits somewhere behind my ribs, too sharp to touch directly, so I let the steady rhythm of his heart do the work instead.

When he finally stirs, I shift because I want his hoodie. He watches me steal the black one from the chair and says nothing while I crawl back into the closet den with it pressed against my face. The fabric smells like smoke, leather, coffee, and the soap he pretends he doesn’t care about buying even though he reaches for the same kind every time.

Arlo gets dressed where I can see him through the opening. “Kael wants me at the market,” he says after he has pulled on his boots. “Perimeter logs. Two hours.”

I tighten my grip on the hoodie, and he waits without turning the silence into pressure. The bond carries the question well enough: whether I want him to stay, whether I want to go, whether I need him to ask again.

“I can stay here.”