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"I\'m awake. For real. Sorry. I didn\'t mean to scare you."

"I\'m more worried that you\'re scared yourself."

"It was just a bad dream," he said sheepishly and tried to smile, but she shook her head.

"That was more than a dream, Zev. You were screaming."

"Sorry."

"No," Sasha rolled her eyes. "Don\'t apologize. Tell me what it was about. Get it off your chest. You said he was going to kill me. Who? Were you talking about those guys we ran from when you found me?"

Zev swallowed and reached to push her hair behind her ear. She put a hand to his arm, gripping him, stroking. She was trying to comfort him, he realized, and hated himself for scaring her.

"Zev?" she asked a moment later when he hadn\'t responded.

"I just… I dreamed that they were coming for you again and I couldn\'t stop it," he said, raking a hand through his hair, smiling sheepishly. "Don\'t worry about me, babe. For real. It\'s just a dream. I just need to relax."

She protested, but he settled her back down on the bed, wrapped her in his arms, shushing her questions and saying they could talk about it in the morning. She sighed, but he stroked her hair until she started to relax.

"You need to relax too," she murmured as she began to drift off.

"Shhhhhh, I\'m fine, just rest, Sash."

But he was trembling and he knew… he knew he wasn\'t going to sleep again that night.

"Just rest," he murmured to her. "Don\'t worry. I\'m here. Just rest."

It took a long time for her to fall asleep, and even longer for her to stop twitching every time he moved. But finally, an hour later, she was deeply asleep again and Zev was able to slide out of her arms and hurry silently across the floor to open the door.

Standing in the night air, his chest expanded like he\'d broken through iron bands. He could breathe again. He dropped his head back and sucked at the cold, winter air.

He didn\'t want to leave Sasha, but when he turned his head to look over his shoulder back into the house, his heart stuttered.

He just go be outside. Stay around the tree to make sure she was safe, but be out and breathing the Thana air and look at the stars. That was all. He just needed to give his body a break, and then he\'d come back up and be there for her when she woke up in the morning.

Good plan. Good, solid plan.

He would settle outside in his wolf for an hour. That was all.

Then he\'d be able to sleep.

A flare of anger lit in his chest as he looked back into the house and realized this moment he\'d been waiting for was being ruined—once again—by fucking Nick. But he shoved the thought down, and the anger with it.

He just needed to be outside and alone and he would be fine.

Nodding to himself, he shifted and leaped off the platform to the frozen ground below.

*****

~ SASHA ~

Sasha felt him go, but thought maybe he was going to the bathroom. Or maybe he just needed a minute to himself, so she didn\'t move and tried to keep her breathing even as he crept through the house and out the front door.

Her heart started beating faster. He was leaving? He was leaving her here alone?

She sat up in bed when she heard the soft thud of feet landing on the ground outside. She almost leaped out of the bed and ran to the door to call him back, but then she realized… Zev was never going to leave her in danger. Sure enough, there was a scrabbling sound, and a high, faint whine. And when Sasha inched back the curtains over the window over the bed, she could see a massive, near-black wolf digging a hollow in the ground outside the tree.

As she watched, he finished digging and settled himself inside it, the land now curving up around his sides as he rested that broad, beautiful head on his front paws and curled his tail around his feet.

Sasha hadn\'t had the chance to watch Zev in his wolf before, and she was fascinated.

He was thick and furry, intimidatingly large. If she\'d see a wolf like that in the forest she would have been convinced she was going to die.

But here, curled up like that like the family dog in front of the fire… she wondered whether he went into the wolf because he was scared, or just because the fur would keep him warm?

She almost got up and ran to the door to ask him, but he turned his head suddenly and looked straight at her, peering through the crack in the curtains.

Reflexively, she dropped the curtain and sat back with a gasp, frustrated and a little embarrassed to have been caught spying on him.

But then his voice bloomed in her head.

Go to sleep, Sash. I\'ll keep watch out here. You\'re safe. Go to sleep.

Her heart thrummed. She wanted to go out there with him, hold him, be in whatever pain he was in with him. But she felt him sigh in her head.

One of us needs to sleep. Don\'t worry about me. This is normal.

Sasha twitched back the curtain again and peered out at him. He turned his head, his wolf ears perked.

"Can you hear me?" she murmured.

Yes.

"What\'s wrong?"

He stared at her for a long moment and she thought he might not answer. But then there was a high whine and his nose tipped up, his nostrils flaring.

Sometimes it\'s really hard to be inside walls, he said in her head, finally.

Sasha\'s heart broke. "What did they do to you?"

Nothing. That\'s the thing, Sash. I don\'t fear what\'s happened. I fear what could happen in the future.

She was going to ask, but he shook his head until his ears flapped against his skull.

Go to sleep, beautiful. I\'m going to be fine.

And the words came with a strange resonance in her head, the compulsion to listen and do as he said. She didn\'t understand it, but she knew that he needed to be alone in this. So she sighed and let the curtain drop.

"I love you, Zev."

I love you too, Sash.