Mate Me in Moonlight

Chapter 23

POV: Adeline

My hands wouldn't stop shaking.

Two days since Cedar Falls. Two days since I had fallen apart in front of the entire pack and been caught by arms that shouldn't have felt like home. Two days of heightened patrols and whispered fears and Aiden's vow echoing in my ears every time I closed my eyes.

I sat on the packhouse steps in the late afternoon light, a small block of cedar in my lap and my grandfather's knife in my trembling fingers. The blade caught the sun as I worked, sending scattered light across the worn wood of the stairs.

Carving. A habit from Ash Hollow, from a life that felt like it belonged to someone else. My grandfather had taught me when I was small, pressing tools into my hands and showing me how to find the shapes hidden inside the wood. Everything is already there, he used to say. You're just setting it free.

I hadn't carved anything since the fire. Hadn't been able to touch a knife without thinking of all the ways sharp things could hurt, all the ways my world had been cut to pieces.

But now my hands needed something to do that wasn't clutching at fear. So I carved.

The shape emerging was nothing specific. Just something to occupy my fingers while my mind ran in circles it couldn't escape. Shavings curled away and fell like pale snow around my boots.

"I didn't know you worked with wood."

I startled at Aiden's voice. The knife slipped. The half-formed token tumbled from my lap and bounced down the steps, coming to rest in the dirt at his feet.

He crouched to retrieve it.

I watched his hands—broad, scarred, gentle despite their strength—lift the small piece of cedar and turn it over. He studied the rough shape I had been coaxing from the grain, his dark eyes tracing the cuts and angles with a focus that made my chest tighten.

"It's nothing," I said quickly. "Just keeping my hands busy."

"My mother used to say the same thing." He straightened but didn't return the token. Instead, he held it up to the fading light, examining it from different angles. "She carved constantly. Said it helped her think."

The mention of his mother—rare, precious—made me go still.

"What did she make?"

"Animals, mostly. Wolves. Birds. Once, a bear for my father that he never knew how to receive." A ghost of something crossed his face—not quite a smile, not quite grief. "She had a gift for finding shapes in things."

He looked at the rough cedar in his hand one more time, then pocketed it.

"May I borrow this?"

The question caught me off guard. "It's not finished. It's not anything, really."

"May I?"

I nodded, uncertain. He inclined his head once and walked away, the unfinished token disappearing with him into the compound.

***

The next evening, he found me.

I was in the packhouse kitchen, helping Freya dry dishes from the evening meal. The work was simple, mindless, exactly what I needed after another day of jumping at shadows and flinching at unexpected sounds. Freya had given up trying to make conversation an hour ago, settling instead into companionable silence.

Aiden appeared in the doorway.

"Adeline. A moment?"

Freya took the cloth from my hands before I could set it down, shooting me a look that said go with an intensity that brooked no argument.

I followed him out of the kitchen, through the main hall, to the quiet corner near the stairs where we had stood two nights ago when he asked me to move into the packhouse. The memory of that conversation layered over this one—his voice saying for safety while his eyes said something else entirely.

He stopped and turned to face me.

"Give me your hand."

I extended my palm without thinking. The trust in that gesture—the automatic surrender of a woman who had learned to expect rejection from every hand that reached for her—struck me only after I had already done it.

Aiden pressed something into my palm.

Small. Smooth. Warm from being held.

I looked down.

The cedar token lay in my hand, but it wasn't the rough, shapeless thing I had dropped on the stairs. It had been transformed. The wood had been carved into the shape of a wolf—small enough to fit in my closed fist, detailed enough to show the curve of ears, the lift of a muzzle, the suggestion of fur along the spine.

Beautiful.

I stared at it, unable to speak. My fingers curled around the figure, feeling the smoothness of the finished grain, the careful work that had turned my nervous scraps into something worth keeping.

"It's not much," Aiden said quietly.

I lifted my eyes to his face. Something in my expression must have shown, because his jaw tightened and his gaze softened all at once.

"It's the first gift anyone's given me since—"

I couldn't finish. The words lodged in my throat, too heavy to speak. Since Caleb. Since Ash Hollow. Since I became a woman no one wanted to give things to because giving to me meant expecting me to stay, and everyone knew I would eventually leave or be sent away.

Aiden didn't need me to finish.

"I know," he said.

Two words. That was all. But they held everything—understanding, patience, the quiet acknowledgment that he saw what this meant and wouldn't diminish it by pretending otherwise.

My wolf stirred beneath my ribs.

She made a sound I hadn't heard from her in years—a soft yip, high and sweet, the noise pups made when they were given something that delighted them. Joy and longing braided together, inseparable, rising through my chest like light through water.

I clutched the cedar wolf tighter.

It was precious. Not because of the craftsmanship, though that was fine. Not because of the material, though cedar had always been my favorite wood. It was precious because he had seen my trembling hands and rough attempts and chosen to complete what I couldn't finish myself. Because he had taken something shapeless and afraid and turned it into something whole.

The way he was doing with me.

"Thank you," I managed. The words felt inadequate, too small for what I wanted to express.

"You're welcome." He paused, and something shifted in his expression—vulnerability, quickly controlled. "My mother would have liked you. She always said you could tell a lot about a person by what they chose to make with their hands."

"What do you think it says about me?"

"That you're still trying." His eyes held mine. "That you haven't stopped believing something beautiful can come from broken pieces."

I had no response to that. Nothing that wouldn't crack me open in ways I wasn't ready to be cracked.

So I simply stood there, holding his gift, feeling my wolf settle into a contentment I had forgotten she was capable of feeling.

After a long moment, Aiden stepped back.

"Goodnight, Adeline."

"Goodnight."

He walked away. I watched him go until he disappeared up the stairs toward his room—our rooms, separated by a wall that felt thinner every night.

Then I looked down at the cedar wolf in my hand and pressed it to my heart.

That night, I tucked the carved wolf under my pillow.

It was a small thing. A foolish thing, maybe—the gesture of a child seeking comfort from an object that couldn't protect her. But when I lay down and turned toward the wall that separated me from Aiden, the scent of cedar rose from the pillow like a whispered promise.

It smelled like him.

Not just the wood, but something underneath—the particular way the grain had absorbed the warmth of his hands as he worked, the oil from his skin that had seeped into the finished surface. The wolf carried his scent the way a mate-gift was meant to, even if neither of us had named it that.

I curled around the pillow and closed my eyes.

The first gift anyone's given me since—

I let the thought complete itself in the darkness. Since Caleb. Since the last morning before the fire, when he had brought me wildflowers from the meadow and I had laughed and called him sentimental and not known that I would never laugh at his gifts again.

But this was different. This was new.

This was Aiden, who carved wolves from my broken beginnings and didn't ask me to be whole before he gave me things.

I fell asleep with the cedar warm against my cheek and his heartbeat steady through the wall, and for the first time in longer than I could remember, my last thought before dreaming was not of fire.

It was of possibility.