The morning after the storm, we walk back to campus in silence. Mud on our shoes, his scent on my skin, the question I asked still hanging unanswered between us. What are you really, Rhys? He doesn't bring it up. I don't push.
Three days of public performances, private silence. Then a text at seven PM Sunday: Cottage. Eight. Wear something loose.
The mats are cleared to the edges of the room. No blocking pads. No drills. Just open space and blankets stacked near the door.
"You wanted transformation training." He stands in the center, arms crossed. "Tonight we start."
I change in the corner—oversized shirt, athletic shorts—while he faces the wall. When I turn back, he's rolling his sleeves to his elbows, and something about the deliberate way he does it makes my mouth go dry.
"Come here." He positions me in the center. "The shift starts in your spine. Not your limbs, not your chest—your spine. Everything radiates outward from there."
His hand presses flat between my shoulder blades, and my back arches involuntarily. His other hand finds my stomach, palm warm against thin fabric.
"When the shift begins, your instinct is to fight it. Clench your muscles. Hold your human form together." His fingers spread across my abdomen. "That's what causes the pain. You have to let go."
"Letting go isn't exactly my strength."
"I noticed." His breath ghosts across the back of my neck. "Close your eyes. Focus on my hand. When you feel the shift start, breathe into it."
I close my eyes. The shift begins as it always does—a crack deep in my bones. I jerk forward.
"Don't fight it." His voice drops low, intimate, close to my ear. "Breathe in. Let it move through you. I'm right here."
The pain spreads—ribs reshaping, muscles tearing and reforming. I gasp, and his arm wraps around my waist.
"Stay with me. Let the wolf come. She knows the way."
Something about his voice—the cadence, the steadiness—cracks open a memory I buried years ago. My mother's arms around me during those early shifts. Her voice in the dark, not singing, just murmuring. I'm here, I'm here, I'm here.
The pain peaks and I scream. His arms tighten.
"Through it, not against it. You're almost there. Trust your body. Trust me."
I let go.
The shift completes—clean, whole, every bone finding its right place without agony. Four legs. Fur. The world exploding into scent and sound so vivid it's violent. I'm fully wolf, and nothing hurts.
Rhys crouches in front of me, gray eyes level with mine. His hand extends, palm up, and I press my muzzle against it before I can think about what that means.
"Now come back. Same principle. Don't fight the reverse."
The shift back is harder—but his hand stays on my fur, then on my shoulder, then on bare skin as the wolf recedes. When it ends, I'm human and shaking, wrapped in one of the blankets. Clothed. Warm. Whole for the first time in my life, the shift leaving behind none of the usual wreckage.
"I did it." My voice comes out raw. "Rhys, I actually—"
"You did it." He's still crouching, and the look on his face stops my breath—jaw slack, eyes wide, hands hovering near my shoulders with a tremor that has nothing to do with cold. "You were magnificent."
The blanket has slipped off one shoulder, and his eyes follow the bare skin down—collarbone, the curve of my breast beneath loose fabric, the way the blanket pools in my lap leaving my legs exposed. His pupils blow wide, gray swallowed by black, and his throat works on a swallow that looks painful.
"Rhys." My voice comes out hoarse. "You're staring."
"I know." He doesn't look away. His hands curl into fists on his knees, knuckles white, every line of his body pulled taut. "You have no idea what you look like right now."
He kisses me soft at first—mouth barely brushing mine, testing. I fist his shirt and drag him closer. The kiss shifts—deeper, harder, his teeth catching my lower lip. A sound escapes him that I feel in my chest.
"Tell me to stop." He speaks against my mouth. "Tell me this is still fake."
"I can't. I don't want to."
He lowers me onto the mat, his body settling over mine. His mouth finds my throat, my collarbone, the hollow beneath my ear. My hands shove under his shirt, desperate for skin, and the muscle beneath my palms flexes and tightens.
The blanket falls away and his hands replace it—tracing the shape of me through fabric before slipping underneath. His palm slides up my ribs, thumb brushing across my breast, and the sound I make stops him cold.
"Okay?" His forehead presses against mine.
"If you stop I'll kill you."
His laugh comes out shattered. He pulls my shirt over my head, then his own, and the press of bare skin against bare skin arches my back off the mat. His mouth trails down my sternum, my stomach, teeth grazing my hipbone while his fingers hook into my waistband.
He's gentle at first. Slow hands, murmured questions against my skin, pausing when I tense. His mouth returns to mine, swallowing every sound, and when he finally moves inside me the world narrows to the weight of him, the stretch, the impossible closeness of another body pressed so deep against mine that I can't tell where I end.
"Look at me." His voice is raw. Wrecked. "Stay with me."
His face hovers above mine, jaw tight, arms trembling where they brace on either side of my head. The control is costing him everything—I can see it in the cords of his neck, the white knuckles, the way he holds himself still.
Then my hips arch into his and the gentleness burns away. His grip tightens on my thigh, pulling me closer, the rhythm shifting into something urgent and desperate. My nails rake down his back and he groans against my throat—a sound so raw it vibrates through my bones. His mouth finds mine again, messy and open, and I swallow his groan as his hips snap forward and my body answers in a language I didn't know I spoke.
His hand slides between us, finding the exact spot that makes my vision white out, and my fingers twist in his hair hard enough to hurt. He doesn't stop—doesn't slow—just watches my face with those blown-black eyes while his hand and his body work together to unravel me completely.
I come apart with his name on my lips and his forehead pressed against mine. He follows seconds later, shuddering, his face buried in my neck, breathing my name into my skin like it's the only word left in his vocabulary.
After, we lie tangled on the mat, his chest against my back, one arm pinning me against him. His lips press lazily against my shoulder, and I let my hand drift along his arm, upward—forearm, bicep, over his shoulder. Then down his spine, over warm skin and hard muscle, until my fingertips catch on something that doesn't belong.
A scar. Long, raised, deliberate. A wound that was meant to mark.
His entire body turns to stone.
"What is this?" My fingers trace the length. "Rhys. Who did this to you?"
His breathing stops, then restarts. Shallow. Controlled.
"My father." Barely audible. "When I was seven. When he found out what I am."
His heart hammers against my spine. Vampire-human hybrids are shunned, disinherited, cast out. But they aren't scarred at seven. Aren't branded by their own fathers for something discovered—something monstrous enough to warrant a permanent reminder.
The Vances wouldn't do this for diluted blood. Only for something they considered an abomination. The kind worth killing at birth.
Vampire-werewolf. The forbidden one.
I press my lips to the raised skin. He shudders—one violent tremor, head to toe—and his arm crushes me tighter against his chest.