The dented motorcycle stood between us like proof of the first choice he had made for Sophie—metal sacrificed before he knew her name.

I walked around it.

Silas watched every step.

"I'm still angry," I said.

"You should be."

"Stop agreeing so efficiently. It makes fighting with you unpleasant."

"I can try being unreasonable. Ronan gives lessons."

A laugh escaped me. Silas's eyes closed for one second, as if the sound had touched somewhere tender.

When he opened them, the hunger there made the garage smaller.

"I'm angry because the bond made me feel chosen before I knew there was a choice," I said. "Grant used to arrange two bad options and call whatever I picked consent."

Silas's hand tightened around the edge of the bench.

"Tell me what choice looks like now."

The question belonged to me. He handed it over without conditions.

I moved close enough to smell soap beneath gasoline and rain. Close enough that his body heat reached mine. His wolf pressed against the bond, not lunging, only there—enormous and waiting.

"It looks like me coming to find you."

His chest rose.

"Yes."

"It looks like me being angry without you leaving forever."

"I can do that."

"And it looks like you asking before you touch me."

His voice roughened. "May I touch you?"

My pulse jumped so hard he had to hear it.

"Where?"

Gold burned briefly around his pupils.

"Your hands."

Of everything he wanted, he chose my hands.

"Yes."

Silas placed his palms beneath mine. Grease stained the heel of his hand. His fingers were warm, scarred, and careful enough to make my throat ache.

The bond opened a fraction.

Want struck first—deep, physical, and startling. He wanted my body against his with a force that felt like weather. But beneath it lived something quieter: relief that I had come, terror of mishandling what I offered, and a tenderness so fierce it had teeth.

I swayed toward him.

His hands remained under mine.

"Silas."

"I'm here."

"Hold me."

He searched my face. "As your mate?"

"As the man who stayed outside my door."

His control broke only in his breathing.

Then his arms came around me.

Not carefully enough to feel distant. Not tightly enough to trap. One arm wrapped my waist; the other spread across my back, drawing me against the solid heat of his chest. I heard his heart strike once, hard, beneath my ear.

The sound answered something inside me.

I gripped his shirt.

Silas lowered his face into my hair but did not kiss me. A growl trembled through him, so low I felt it more than heard it.

"Too much?" he asked.

"No."

His hand moved once along my spine and stopped before the touch could become a question I was not ready to answer.

For one breath, I imagined lifting my face. His mouth. His teeth at the place where my neck met my shoulder.

The bond flooded with his response.

Silas went rigid.

"You felt that," I whispered.

"Yes."

"Don't apologize for it."

"I was going to apologize for what it did to me."

I smiled against his chest. "Keep that part private."

"Trying."

Footsteps approached from the mudroom. Silas released me before the door opened, but slowly enough that it felt like respect instead of guilt.

Miriam Cole entered carrying a courier envelope thick enough to stop a bullet.

The MC attorney took in my flushed face, Silas's ruined concentration, and the wrench still lying beside the same solitary bolt.

"Should I come back?"

"No," I said.

Silas said, "Yes."

Miriam ignored him and handed me the envelope.

"Your complete medical record from Nolan Keene's clinic. It arrived twelve minutes ago."

My name appeared across the label beneath a patient number I had never seen.

"How many appointments does he say I attended?"

Miriam's expression lost its humor.

"Seventeen."

My fingers tightened around the paper.

"I've never been inside his clinic."

"I know." She opened the envelope and removed the first page. "Which raises an interesting question."

She pointed to the address printed beneath Nolan's letterhead.

"How did he treat you there four months before the building existed?"