The aftermath of Silas's visit left the cabin feeling brittle, as if the air itself might shatter if someone spoke too loudly. Reid had eventually shifted back fully, a process that looked less like magic and more like a car crash in slow motion bones snapping and sliding back into place, skin tightening, the frantic heat of his metabolism slowly cooling to a simmer.
He was asleep now, or perhaps unconscious, sprawled on the sofa under a heavy wool blanket. Clara sat at her father's desk, her hands still smelling of the antiseptic she'd used to clean the shallowest of Reid's wounds.
She pulled a box from the back of the closet—one she had avoided since she arrived. It was labeled Oakhaven History - Private. Inside weren't just city records; there were her father's medical journals, the leather cracked and the pages yellowed by the damp Pacific air.
She opened the first one. Her father's handwriting, usually a precise, elegant script, was frantic in these entries.
October 14th. Thomas Blackwood brought the boy in today. Not Reid—the older one, Silas. He's only twelve, but his pulse is 140 beats per minute at rest. His temperature is 104. Any other child would be dead. Thomas looks at me with such a hollowed-out expression. He knows I see it. He knows I can't "cure" what is written in their marrow.
Clara flipped through the pages, her heart sinking. There were sketches of cellular structures that looked like human white blood cells but were jagged, aggressive things. There were notes on "The Cycle." And then, a name that made her breath hitch: The Vaughn-Blackwood Pact.
A floorboard groaned behind her. She turned to see Reid standing in the doorway. He looked pale, wearing an old shirt of her father's that was too tight across his chest. He looked at the journal in her hand, then at the floor.
"He tried to help us," Reid said softly. "Your father. My dad didn't trust anyone, but he trusted Dr. Vaughn. He thought that maybe science could find the bridge back to being just… men."
"He was studying your blood," Clara said, her voice a whisper. "He wasn't just my father's friend. He was his patient. Why didn't anyone tell me?"
Reid walked over, his movement still slightly stiff. He sat on the edge of the desk, looking at the drawings of his own fractured biology. "Because you can't tell a child that the neighbors turn into wolves, Clara. And because your father realized that the more he knew, the more danger he was in. Silas… even as a kid, Silas didn't want to be cured. He saw your father as a threat to his nature."
Clara looked at the notes again. "The hunger is not for meat," her father had written. "It is a hunger for the loss of self. The wolf offers an escape from the pain of being human. Reid fights it. Silas embraces it. I fear for the one who tries to stand between them."
"Is that why my father left?" Clara asked, looking up at him. "Because of Silas?"
"He left to protect you," Reid said. He reached out, his hand hovering near hers before he finally took the risk and covered her fingers with his. His skin was warm again, but the feverish heat had faded into something comforting. "Silas started following him. Not to kill him, but to haunt him. My dad told your father to take you and go, to get as far from the ridge as possible."
"But he came back," Clara said. "He came back here to die."
"He came back because he missed the trees," Reid said, a sad smile touching his lips. "Or maybe because he knew I was still here, and he felt guilty for leaving me alone with what I am."
The intimacy of the moment was thick, a physical weight in the small room. Clara stood up, finding herself trapped between Reid and the desk. She could smell the pine on him, the scent of the woods after a rain, and the metallic tang of the blood that hadn't quite washed away.
"You're not alone anymore," she said.
Reid's eyes darkened, that amber flicker returning to the depths of his pupils. "Clara, look at those notes. Look at what I am. I am a biological anomaly designed to hunt. You spend your days preserving old books, keeping things from falling apart. I am the thing that tears them up."
"You're the man who delivered firewood because he knew I'd be cold," she countered. "You're the man who stayed on my lawn all night to make sure nothing else came near this house. Don't tell me who you are. I'm watching you. I see who you are."
Reid leaned in, his forehead resting against hers. It was a gesture of such profound vulnerability that it hurt to watch. "I want to be the man you see," he whispered. "I want it so badly I can't breathe."
He kissed her then. It wasn't like the stories there was no gentle hesitation. It was a desperate, starving thing. It tasted of salt and longing. Reid's hands moved to her waist, and she felt the incredible, terrifying strength in his grip, the way his muscles felt like coiled springs under his skin.
But as he kissed her, he was also pulling back, his touch light as if she were made of the very parchment she restored. He was a man holding a bird, terrified that a single heartbeat of lost control would crush her.
Clara pulled him closer, her fingers tangling in his dark hair. She wanted to tell him that she wasn't fragile, that she had survived her own ghosts, and that she wasn't afraid of his.
Outside, the wind picked up, howling through the eaves of the cabin. But for the first time in her life, Clara didn't find the sound lonely.
They stayed there in the dim light of the study, surrounded by the records of a cursed past, trying to build a bridge toward a future that felt as thin as a single sheet of paper.
"The full moon is in three days," Reid whispered against her skin, his voice thick with dread.
"Then we have three days," Clara replied. "And I'm not going anywhere."