Chapter 4 The Weight of Five Years

MIRA POV

My phone had fourteen unread messages from Sable when I finally looked at it.

The first one was from this morning, right after I'd left for the meeting. You okay? Then one an hour later. Then two more after that, spaced out, the gaps getting shorter each time, the way his messages always did when I stopped responding .. patient at first, then less patient, then the one that just said Mira. with a full stop at the end, which meant he was close to getting in his car.

The last one, sent twelve minutes ago, said: 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 by 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 easier. Smaller. More manageable.

I heard him take the stairs instead of the lift. He always took the stairs. Said lifts in old buildings made a sound he didn't like. Then his key in the lock .. I'd given him a copy two years ago after a bad week .. and the door opened and his footsteps went past the hallway, checked the living room, came back, and then stopped 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, Mira."

"It's a good floor."

He came and sat down next to me. Not across from me, not in a chair like a normal person .. just lowered himself onto the tiles right beside me, shoulder to shoulder, legs stretched out, back against the same cabinet. Sable had been doing this since we were kids. Finding whatever floor I'd ended up on and just .. joining me there. He never made me move. Never made me explain before I was ready.

We sat like that for a while.

The kitchen smelled like the dish soap I'd used this morning and the faint burnt smell from the toaster that I kept meaning to clean and never did. The fridge was making its low, slightly uneven hum. Outside, the street was doing its evening thing .. someone's music two floors up, a car going past, rain starting against the window. Soft. Not heavy yet.

"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 right away and apologised. He looked confused about it himself."

"Mira."

"I know."

"That's not nothing. You understand that, right? That's not just him being .. that's the bond. That's his wolf routing around the gap."

"I know," I said again.

"Did you feel it?"

I didn't answer straight away. The rain was picking up outside. One of those slow evening rains that took its time deciding how serious it wanted to be.

"Yes," I said.

Sable put his head back against the cabinet and looked at the ceiling. He had a long exhale that wasn't quite a sigh. More like something he'd been holding all day that he was finally letting go of.

"How long are you planning to wait?" he said.

"I'm not .. I'm not waiting. I just need more time."

"For what?"

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

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

I picked at a loose thread on my sleeve. The tile was cold through my trousers. I'd been sitting here long enough that the cold had moved past uncomfortable into something I'd just stopped feeling.

"If I give them back now," I said, "he's going to remember everything. Not just us. Everything that happened. 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 I was .. Sable, what happened during those two years, if he gets that back all at once, he's not going to be careful about it. He's going to go straight at Destan and it's going to be a mess and people are going to 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 and I didn't respond.

"You've been holding his memories for five years, Mira. His life. His feelings. His whole history with you, inside your body, keeping it safe. And 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 it stop being protection and start being something else?"

"Don't do that."

"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 for a moment longer. The look older brothers had when they'd already said everything they could say and they knew it and they were choosing to let it sit rather than push harder. He didn't agree. I could see that. But he didn't push.

"Okay," he said.

"Okay?"

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

"No."

"Do you want to eat?"

"Not really."

"I'm going to make you something anyway."

"Sable.."

"I'm not asking." He got up and went to my fridge and started pulling things out, moving around my kitchen the way he moved around his own because he'd spent enough time in it that the difference didn't matter anymore. He found eggs and bread and the one tomato I had left and started doing something with them. The pan went on the hob. The butter hissed when it hit the heat.

I stayed on the floor.

The smell of butter and something toasting reached me and my stomach did a small, reluctant thing that meant it was paying attention even if the rest of me wasn't. I rested my head back against the cabinet and closed my eyes and just let the sounds happen around me. The pan. The rain. Sable moving. The hum of the fridge. The upstairs neighbour's music fading down to nothing.

He brought me a plate and sat back down next to me and we ate on the kitchen floor without a table or proper chairs like two people who had completely given up on doing things normally tonight, and I ate most of it even though I hadn't been hungry, because he'd made it and he was here and that mattered.

"Thank you," I said.

"Shut up," he said, not unkindly.

I fell asleep sitting up at some point. I didn't mean to. One minute Sable was talking about something .. work, I think, something about a meeting he had next week .. and then I was somewhere else and then I was nowhere.

And then I was awake.

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

Something outside had woken me. A sound I couldn't name. Not loud. More like a shift, like the air outside the building had changed.

I got up carefully so I didn't wake Sable and went to the window.

The street was wet and dark and mostly empty. One car parked badly two spaces down. A light on in the laundromat across the road even though it was closed. The rain coming straight down, no wind.

And Caius, standing on the pavement below.

Hands in his pockets. Not moving. 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 decided yet whether to go. He was completely soaked. He didn't seem to notice. Or maybe he noticed and didn't care, which was more likely, which was so completely him that it made something in my chest press tight and hard against my ribs.

He didn't know which window was mine.

He didn't even know this was my building. He couldn't. 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 in his sleep and he hadn't thought to argue.

I stood at the window and I watched him and he stood in the rain and didn't leave.