When I awoke, before I opened my eyes, for the briefest moment I could imagine that I was back at home in my own bed. I knew it wasn't real—it felt like chasing the tail end of a good dream—but for a few minutes, I let myself stay there until I realized the mattress under my back was not the uneven, lumpy mattress in my apartment. The room before me when I opened my eyes was unfamiliar. It was small and unremarkable, with soft light filtering in through a window that looked out into a canopy of trees.

My hand flew to my stomach—the last thing I remembered was the searing pain. The pain was still there, though now it was more of a dull ache. I hiked up the hem of the too-large t-shirt I was wearing and gingerly peeled back the bandages. The wounds were closing, far shallower now as my flesh knitted itself back together. I grimaced when I thought of the scars they would leave behind.

Cautiously, I propped myself up on my elbows then worked my way into a sitting position. My skin pulled and protested as I moved, but it was tolerable. When I looked around the room again, the only thing I recognized were my bloody sneakers by the door. Panic tightened my throat and I threw the blankets off toward the foot of the bed. Below the t-shirt, I found myself dressed in black sweats that about swallowed me whole. Quickly, too quickly, I slid out of the bed and my vision dimmed. Before I hit the ground, I managed to catch myself on the nightstand and took a few slow, deep breaths.

The feeling of missing time and waking up in a strange place was disorienting and left me deeply unsettled. Based on how much my wounds had healed, I guessed I had likely been out for a couple days. Bending over to pull on my shoes was out of the question, so I left them where they sat and counted down from three in my head before opening the door. I crept barefoot into the hallway and froze.

I knew exactly where I was: the bare walls and freezing temperature gave it away instantly. Now all I needed to know was how to get out. I glanced back at my shoes, considering biting the bullet and taking the pain if for no other reason than to shield my feet from the cold hardwood floors, but the sweat that beaded across my forehead from the effort of getting out of bed warned me off.

Steadying myself against the wall, I moved slowly down the hallway. I gathered that I was on the first floor of the house, and with any luck Gabriel would be shut away in his office while I found the front door. If I thought about him too hard, the top of my head burned softly where his palm had rested.

The hallway, as it turned out, led not to the front door as I'd hoped, but to the kitchen. Gabriel was seated on a tall stool leaning forward with his elbows on the kitchen island and when he looked up, meeting my eyes, I felt dizzy all over again. He was by my side in an instant.

"You shouldn't be up," he said firmly.

"I'm fine," I promised. I wished that my voice had come out stronger.

Gabriel led me to the stool he'd been sitting on and with some effort I hoisted myself up onto the seat. It was obvious by the way he kept his hands hovering close that he wanted to lift me onto it himself, but I was grateful that he refrained. Once I was seated and he made sure I was steady, he moved to the sink and filled a glass with water. He slid it to me across the counter.

"Drink." He was watching me closely, blue eyes narrowed, looking for any signs of my discomfort.

"I'm fine, I swear."

"Drink." An order this time.

I took a sip then put the glass back down.

"All of it." He nodded with satisfaction when I sighed and obeyed, then took the empty glass back and refilled it. I rolled my eyes.

Gabriel circled back around the counter to set the full glass in front of me, then gestured towards my stomach. "Let me see."

I drew back quickly, shaking my head. "There's no need, it looks better."

Gabriel glanced at the clock. "I'd have come in an hour to put the salve on and change your bandages anyway."

The color drained from my face just as a flurry of butterflies took wing inside of me. He had been by my bedside, hands on my skin, taking care of me while I slept. I wanted to hate that thought more than I did. "Why?"

"You lost a lot of blood. When you passed out, I brought you here." He said it so matter-of-factly I nearly felt stupid for even asking.

"No," I clarified, "I meant, why not Aubrey? Or Ephraim?"

"Aubrey doesn't have a spare room, but she showed me what to do. Ephraim helped the first night." He was still waiting, impatient with me for making him explain himself. I gave in and moved my arms so he could lift the shirt and remove the bandages carefully. He leaned down, moving in to inspect the wounds so closely that I could feel his breath warming my skin. His scent was overwhelming, almost spicy. I kept my eyes fixed on the pendant light hanging over the counter instead of letting them roam over his back and shoulders.

"Where's Odette?" The last thing I wanted was for her to walk in on this, especially once I realized with a start that I was probably wearing Gabriel's clothes.

"Not here." He ran a finger softly over the end of one of the wounds, shallower than the rest, that had already healed into a shiny pink scar. It raised goosebumps down the backs of my arms and I clenched my teeth to hide the shiver that followed.

"Oh."

He was taping the bandage back on now. "She was just visiting."

"Will she be back?" Breathing felt next to impossible and Gabriel could without a doubt hear my heart racing fast and loud in my chest. I hoped he would attribute it to the pain.

"More than likely." He straightened up and stepped away, apparently satisfied with my healing. I wanted to pretend that I could hear disappointment or even disdain in his voice, but he was just as unreadable as ever.

He went back to lean on the other side of the counter. He seemed so relaxed today, so much more at ease than I'd seen him before. Worried, but for once not angry. His hands resting open on the counter instead of clenched into fists.

I finished the second glass of water but held onto it so he couldn't fill it again. It had helped, though, and my dizziness had almost fully abated. Thinking clearer now, I realized just how badly I needed to get out of there. I hadn't showered or brushed my teeth in three days; I surely looked as terrible as I felt. Gabriel argued that I should stay another night, that I could have a shower there, but after some back and forth he reluctantly agreed to drive me back to my apartment.

I tried to imagine what those few days must have looked like: had he held me the whole way from the clinic to his home? Had he tucked me into the bed himself, and stayed by my bedside the whole time? Had he dressed me? The thought flooded my cheeks with a deep blush.

Gabriel's voice pulled me out of my head. "I'm sure they'll be eager to have you back at the clinic once you're well. Are you enjoying your work there?"

"Yes, thank you." A lie.

"You're lying to me." Fuck.

"I am not."

"Aubrey told me that Marie has had you working inventory since you arrived. You're going to tell me that you enjoy that?" He angled his head slightly towards me when he spoke but kept his eyes glued to the road, a nervous driver.

"I think I'm lucky she's given me anything to do at all," I said.

Gabriel insisted on walking me up to my apartment—a part of the deal if I wanted him to take me back, he'd said. I cursed myself for not having cleaned it yet: the stairwell was still covered in dust, marred now by my muddy boot prints from coming in and out of the snow, and I could tell by the look on Gabriel's face that he could smell the mold much more acutely than I could. He hovered close to me, seemingly afraid I would pass out again as I climbed the stairs.

I kept my head down as I unlocked the apartment and let us in. His size was exaggerated in the tiny space and he had to duck his head slightly to avoid hitting it on the doorframe. The first thing I did when I got inside was check my phone where it was charging on the kitchen counter: there were three days of concerned messages from Jack. I swore.

"What is it?" Gabriel asked quickly.

I turned back to him and held the phone up. "Nothing, just Jack. He worries."

His expression hardened and he averted his gaze, instead moving further into the apartment and looking around the living room. I had tidied, at least, but there was little I could do about the state of the place.

"You're not going back there." Gabriel's voice was terse.

I looked up from my phone, frowning. "What?"

"To the clinic," he specified. He came back into the kitchen, arms crossed. "You're not going back there. And you're not staying here, either. Pack your things." This was tense Gabriel again, no longer the relaxed version of himself that he had been before. The shift would have been alarming if I weren't so accustomed to seeing him this way.

"What are you talking about?" I crossed my own arms, confused and slightly frustrated. The longer I stood, the worse the ache in my abdomen got. I wished he would leave so that I could relax. "Where am I supposed to go?"

"You'll work with Ephraim. I have a guest house on my property. It's not much bigger than this, but at least it's clean." He glanced around, eyes landing on the makeshift coffee table I'd set up with a wooden crate I found behind the clinic and added: "And furnished."

I looked at him in disbelief, wavering somewhere between grateful and annoyed. Of course I wanted to get out of this place. But he had already uprooted my life once before, and now here he was trying to do it all over again.

"My job is fine," I said, "and so is this apartment."

"This apartment is a dump."

I settled my weight and looked up at him defiantly. "You're the one that put me here."

"I told Marie to find you a place to live outside of town. I didn't know it would be..." he gestured around. "Like this."

"Shouldn't you?" I snapped. I was pushing my luck, but I was tired and in pain and all of the hurt from the weekend of the Alpha gathering had been slowly pushing its way to the surface since we'd gotten back. "You're the Alpha; this is your territory."

Gabriel's nostrils flared and he clenched his jaw shut, weighing his words before speaking again. His eyes began to darken though they held mine steadily. "So you'd stay here just to spite me?"

"Why does it matter?" I was beginning to get dizzy; this argument needed to end.

"You're a member of my pack now. It's my responsibility."

"What happened to you're not one of us?" His words had been replaying in my head since that night, and now I threw them back at him.

He took a step towards me and I stepped back, wincing as pain lanced through my stomach. Gabriel noticed and his expression softened slightly, but only slightly. "Quit being stubborn, Kiera."

"Why is it always what you say? What about what I want?" I wanted to yell at him, to kick him out, or at least have the satisfaction of feeling like I was winning the argument, but goddamn the way he said my name.

Gabriel raised an eyebrow. "You want to stay here?"

"Well, no." He could hear it in my voice that I was losing my edge.

He stood quietly for a beat, watching me. Both of our tempers had by now flared and faded and as we stood under the harsh kitchen light, I thought I could almost see something close to regret in his eyes.

"Let me pack your things for you," he offered. When I took a breath to argue, he held up a hand to stop me. "You can stay in my guesthouse temporarily. I'll have someone come clean this place up, then you can decide if you want to come back. Deal?"

It wasn't the worst compromise. I nodded. "Fine."

"And you can talk to Ephraim tomorrow and make your own decision about where you want to work."

"Alright. But I can pack." My energy was waning, but I wanted to at least act like I had some agency left.

Gabriel waited in the hallway outside my bedroom while I threw clothes into my bag, doing my best to ignore the discomfort in my stomach and the weariness in my limbs. While I worked, I considered all of the rumors I'd heard about him before coming here: rumors of his ruthlessness, his cruelty, and his hatred of humans. I'd seen glimpses of those things, but there was more to him than that. A softer, kinder side that emerged slowly and only ever partway. He kept it carefully guarded from those around him as though he meant to protect it from harm.

I felt silly admitting to myself that I desperately wanted to be the one that could draw that part of him out into the open.