Chapter Four: The Weight of Five Years

MIRA POV

My phone had fourteen unread messages from Sable.

The first one came right after I left for the meeting this morning. You okay? Then one an hour later. Then two more after that, the gaps between them getting shorter the longer I stayed quiet, the way his messages always did when I went silent. Patient first, then less patient, then the one that just said Mira. with a full stop, which meant he was already looking for his car keys.

The last one, twelve minutes ago: I’m outside. Buzz me up or I’m calling Petra.

I pressed the buzzer without getting up.

I was on the kitchen floor. Back against the cabinet under the sink, knees pulled up, still in the same clothes I’d worn to the meeting. I’d come home, dropped my bag at the door, and just ended up here. Didn’t plan it. The couch was right there. The bedroom was right there. The floor just felt smaller. More manageable.

I heard him take the stairs instead of the lift. He always took the stairs, said old building lifts made a sound he didn’t trust. Then his key in the lock, the door, his footsteps checking the living room, coming back, stopping at the kitchen doorway.

He looked at me on the floor and didn’t say anything for a second.

“How bad?” he said.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re on the kitchen floor.”

“It’s a good floor.”

He didn’t tell me to get up. He just came and sat down right next to me, shoulder to shoulder, back against the same cabinet, legs stretched out in front of him. Sable had been doing this since we were kids. Finding whatever floor I’d ended up on and joining me there. No questions, no pressure, just there.

We sat like that for a while.

The kitchen smelled like dish soap and the faint burnt smell from the toaster I kept meaning to clean. The fridge hummed its slightly uneven hum. Outside, rain had started against the window, soft and not heavy yet, and someone two floors up was playing music low enough that you could feel it more than hear it.

“He grabbed my wrist,” I said.

Sable went still.

“Not like that,” I said quickly. “He didn’t mean to. I was leaving and his hand just moved. He pulled back straight away and apologised. He looked confused about it himself.”

“Mira.”

“I know.”

“That’s not nothing. That’s the bond. His wolf routing around the gap in his memory.” Sable’s voice was careful and certain at the same time. “You understand that, right?”

“I know,” I said again.

“Did you feel it?”

The rain picked up a little outside. One of those slow evening rains that took its time deciding how serious it wanted to get.

“Yes,” I said.

Sable tipped his head back against the cabinet and let out a long breath. Not quite a sigh. More like something he’d been holding since this morning and was finally allowing himself to put down.

“How long are you planning to wait?” he said.

“I’m not waiting. I just need more time.”

“For what exactly?”

“To figure out how to do this without everything falling apart.”

“The bond is already moving on its own, Mira. His wolf reached for you today and he doesn’t even properly know your name yet. How much more time do you think you have?”

I picked at a loose thread on my sleeve. The floor tiles were cold through my trousers, had been cold for long enough that I’d stopped noticing. “If I give the memories back now he gets everything. Not just us. What Destan did. All of it.”

“I know that.”

“You know what he’ll do when he finds out.”

Sable was quiet.

“You’ve seen him,” I said. “You know what he’s like when someone touches something that’s his. And what happened during those two years, if he gets all of that back at once he’s not going to be careful. He’ll go straight at Destan and it’ll be a mess and people will get hurt and it’ll be because of me.”

“Or,” Sable said slowly, “you let him carry his own weight for once instead of carrying it for him.”

That landed somewhere sore. I didn’t respond.

“You’ve been holding his memories for five years, Mira. His feelings. His whole history with you, inside your body. And right now you’re sitting on your kitchen floor because you saw him for forty minutes today and your hands are still shaking.” He turned his head to look at me. “When does protection stop being protection and become something else?”

“Don’t.”

“I’m not doing anything. I’m asking.”

“I need more time,” I said. “Just a little more. I’m not ready.”

He looked at me the way older brothers looked when they’d said everything they had to say and knew it and were choosing not to push any further. He didn’t agree. I could see that clearly. But he didn’t push.

“Okay,” he said.

“Okay?”

“Not forever. But okay for now.” He settled back against the cabinet. “Have you eaten?”

“No.”

“Do you want to?”

“Not really.”

“I’m making you something anyway.”

“Sable…”

“Not asking.” He got up and went to the fridge and started pulling things out, moving around my kitchen like it was his own because he’d spent enough time in it that the difference stopped mattering a long time ago. Eggs, bread, the one tomato I had left. The pan went on, butter hissing when it hit the heat.

I stayed on the floor.

The smell of butter and toast reached me and my stomach did a small reluctant thing. I rested my head back against the cabinet and just let the sounds happen. The pan, the rain, Sable moving, the fridge, the upstairs music going quiet. He brought a plate and sat back down and we ate on the kitchen floor like two people who had completely given up on doing things the normal way tonight, and I ate most of mine even though I hadn’t been hungry, because he made it and he was here and that mattered.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Shut up,” he said, not unkindly.

At some point I fell asleep sitting up. One minute Sable was talking about something, work probably, a meeting next week, and then I was somewhere else entirely and then I was nowhere.

Then I was awake.

Midnight. Kitchen dark except for the small light Sable had left on over the hob. He was still beside me, asleep now too, head dropped to one side, plate on the floor in front of him. The rain was heavier than before.

Something had woken me. A sound I couldn’t name. Not loud, not close, more like a shift in the air outside, like the street had changed its quality somehow.

I got up carefully and went to the window.

The street was wet and dark and mostly empty. One car parked badly. The laundromat across the road with a light still on even though it was closed hours ago. Rain coming straight down, no wind.

And Caius standing on the pavement below.

Hands in his pockets. Completely still. He wasn’t looking at my window specifically, his head was tilted up at the building in general, like he’d stopped in front of it without quite meaning to and hadn’t yet decided whether to leave. He was completely soaked. He didn’t seem to notice or didn’t care, which was more likely, which was so entirely him that something in my chest pressed tight and hard against my ribs.

He didn’t know which window was mine.

He didn’t even know this was my building. Nobody had told him where I lived. He’d just ended up here, standing in the rain outside my street at midnight like something had walked him here while he wasn’t paying attention and he hadn’t thought to argue with it.

I stood at the window and watched him.

He stood in the rain and didn’t leave.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​