Shadows

I had closed the clinic, shifted all the in-patients to my mother's clinic while lying of catching a fever, bought in a week's worth of supplies to satisfy my paranoid mind and tried to leave Chicken Nugget at my parents house.

Tried.

Because he was currently curled up on my sofa while I examined the man recovering in my clinic who had not spoken to me for over 20 hours.

By the third night, the change was undeniable.

At first, it was subtle, so subtle I told myself I was imagining it. The hollowness beneath his high cheekbones. The faint quiver in his hands when he shifted his weight. I hovered with instruments around him, checked his fever, pressed the back of my hand to his brow like some nervous novice. But the truth gnawed at me, unrelenting.

It was not sickness. It was not weakness.

It was hunger.

When I placed the tray beside him-bread, broth, tender chicken, it had softened until it fell apart beneath the spoon-he only regarded it with eyes too bright, too restless.

The steam curled into the lamplight, a humble offering, but it went untouched.

"You need food," I urged, forcing cheer into my voice though my chest was tight. "You can't heal without nourishment." I tried for yet another attempt to start a conversation.

He had changed into clothes I had bought, all black and plain yet it made him look so deliberately regal.

I watched as his throat move as if swallowing something heavier, darker than words. Still he did not reach for the bread. Did not lift the spoon. His long fingers curled against the blanket instead, tendons sharp beneath pale skin, restrained power in every line.

"It will not suffice," he said finally, his voice low and rough, as though speaking it cost him.

A chill skated over my skin. "Then... what will?"

For a long moment there was silence. Then his gaze lifted to mine.

And in that molten red, I saw it-the hunger. Not for what I had set before him. Something deeper, rawer. It made my skin prickle, my pulse trip.

"The blood of the hunt," he murmured, each word a confession dragged from his soul. "The life beneath fur and bone. Only that would sustain me when I am wounded." His gaze flicked to the tray with a faint grimace. "This... is but ash upon my tongue."

My stomach clenched. "You mean-"

"Yes." His voice cracked like dry wood in a fire. "Flesh. Blood." He offered two words.

I could not look away, even as my heart hammered. He wasn't cursed merely to wear another shape. His survival itself was bound to the beast inside him. He was not half-wolf, half-man. He was both, at once, inseparable.

And still, impossibly, unbearably... I could not step back.

Rowan shifted, the lamplight painting the sharp lines of his body through the thin sheet. Even in weariness, he was beautiful in a way that hurt to look at-too sharp, too perfect, carved by something not mortal.

His hair clung damp against his forehead, his jaw shadowed by dark stubble that made him look both regal and ruinous.

"You are afraid," he said, watching me. His voice was velvet laced with gravel, deep enough to stir something low in my belly.

"And yet you do not run."

"I..." My throat tightened. "I should."

His lips curved faintly, not quite a smile. "And yet you remain."

The silence between us grew thick, electric. His golden gaze lingered on me too long, burning, as though he could sense the flutter of my pulse, the tremor in my breath. I felt laid bare beneath it, stripped of every shield.

My hand brushed the edge of the tray, but his attention followed the motion-followed my hand, my wrist, the delicate beat beneath my skin.

Hunger flickered there again, not only the hunger of a predator but something dangerously close to desire. It startled me, but yet I remained there curious of this fleeting feeling that had shown it's face from the very night we met.

He leaned forward, slow, deliberate, until the sheet slipped lower, baring the sculpted planes of his chest from between the shirts that was left open for the conscience of bandaging.

My breath caught. Even scarred and stitched, his body was a masterpiece of strength and ruin, every line built for violence.

"I can hear it," he murmured.

"Hear what?" My voice broke on the words.

"Your blood." His gaze was fixed on the hollow of my throat now, where my pulse throbbed quick and unsteady. "It calls louder than the broth. Every beat, a drum that tempts the wolf."

I froze, my breath caught somewhere between terror and something darker, sharper. His words should have chilled me. Instead, heat pooled low in my stomach, traitorous and undeniable.

"You're scaring me," I whispered, though even to my own ears, the words lacked conviction. And in the back on my mind I knew he was doing this on purpose to scare me, and in a way consider his warning.

His gaze flicked up, catching mine, holding it. "No," he said softly. "What you feel is not fear." There was frustration in his voice when realising it was not dread that flushed my skin red, but there was something else too, beneath all the warnings.

The air between us thickened until it was hard to breathe. He reached out, slow enough that I could have stopped him, but I didn't. His fingers brushed my wrist-barely, a whisper of contact, yet it burned. My pulse leapt, betraying me.

Zevrael' lips curved again, darker this time. "See? Even your body knows the truth. You are not afraid of me, healer."

My knees weakened, heat rushing through me, and I hated that he was right. I wanted to deny it, to throw the tray, to demand he stop even though it was barely a touch. Instead, I stood frozen, trembling under the fire of his gaze.

"You're dangerous, I get it." I managed, the words a half-breath.

His thumb grazed the inside of my wrist, lingering where the blood thrummed hot and fast. "Yes," he said simply. "You do not sound convinced yourself."

"You're dangerous." I said with more conviction, but was unsure if my pulse beating under his fingers indicated the same.

"Live by it." He said and or a moment, the room no larger than the stretch of his arm, the glow of the lamp, the fire in his eyes. My every breath was filled with him.

"Yes."