The night he found her

Torvak

I didn't go there for her.

I went for information.

The black market never fully closes in this city. It just moves — shifts corners, changes hands, pretends it doesn't exist until you need it.

I walked through it without announcing myself.

I never do.

---

The sounds were the usual kind.

Bargaining. Threatening. Chains. Coins.

I had heard all of it before. Done worse than most of what happened in places like this.

None of it slowed me down.

Until it did.

I stopped.

No reason I could name. No sound. No movement that caught my eye.

Just — my wolf.

Surging forward so hard and fast it nearly came out of me.

*Mine.*

The word wasn't a thought. It arrived like a punch.

I turned my head.

---

She was sitting with the others.

Not fighting. Not crying.

Like someone who has lost the will too.

Chains on her wrists but that wasn't what held her. The stillness did. Too deep. Too complete. The kind that meant she had already gone somewhere inside herself where the chains couldn't reach.

I walked toward her.

Every step — my wolf got louder.

I stopped in front of the trader.

"Lift her head."

He laughed nervously. "She doesn't really respond, she's been like this since—"

"Lift. Her. Head."

He moved fast this time.

Grabbed her chin. Forced her face up.

Her eyes found mine.

Everything in me went quiet.

Then loud.

Then quiet again — but a different kind of quiet. The kind that means something has been decided and your body knew it before you did.

My wolf didn't surge this time.

It settled.

That was worse.

"How much," I said.

---

The man who tried to outbid me is still on the ground somewhere back there.

I don't know his name. Don't care.

He put his hand where it didn't belong and I removed it.

Simple.

---

I took her chains off myself.

Her wrists were marked. Skin raw at the edges.

She didn't react when I touched her. Didn't pull away. Didn't flinch.

Just — nothing.

When my hand brushed her skin my wolf went completely still.

Not calm.

Focused.

I said — "You're coming with me."

She didn't answer.

I lifted her anyway.

---

She was too still the whole walk back.

Not unconscious. Something worse than that.

Absent.

My grip tightened without meaning to.

"You're not dead," I said.

Nothing.

"Good."

Halfway there her fingers moved against my arm. Just slightly.

I stopped walking.

Looked down.

Her eyes were open. Watching me. Not fully present — but watching.

"Stay that way," I told her.

I don't know why I said it.

I kept walking.

---

I set her down inside and stepped back.

Brought water. Put it in front of her.

"Drink."

Nothing.

I waited. Nothing.

"You're not in chains. You can move."

Her eyes shifted to me. One second. Then gone again.

I sat down across from her and stayed.

I didn't plan to stay. I just didn't leave.

---

Morning.

She hadn't touched the water.

I crouched in front of her.

"You intend to starve."

Nothing.

"You won't last like that."

Silence.

"Is that the point?"

Her eyes moved. Just barely.

Not an answer. But not nothing either.

I stood up and left.

Came back in the afternoon with food.

Sat down. Didn't speak immediately.

Then — "You're safe here."

Strange thing to say. I don't say things like that.

Her fingers moved.

I leaned back slightly.

"Eat."

A long time passed.

Then her hand lifted. Shaky. Slow.

She picked something up and ate.

Something inside me went completely still.

My wolf quieted.

Just slightly.

It was enough.

---

Days passed.

She didn't recover all at once. It wasn't like that.

But she started eating. Drinking. Looking up when I came in.

Small things.

I started coming back earlier. I noticed that. It irritated me.

One night I told her — "You're interfering with my structure."

She said nothing.

"I leave early. I come back late. That's how it works."

Silence.

"Now I come back early."

Nothing.

"I don't like it."

I didn't change it either.

---

One night I came in and she wasn't where I left her.

Every instinct I had sharpened at once.

Then I saw her.

Standing.

Near the window.

Weak. Unsteady.

But standing on her own.

I crossed the room slowly.

"You moved."

She didn't answer.

Didn't sit back down either.

Just stood there looking out at the dark.

Something shifted in my chest that I didn't have a name for yet.

"Good," I said quietly.

Because I had already decided — without meaning to, without planning it —

she wasn't going back to what she was.

Not while I was here.

---

That evening I sat across from her and tried once more.

"Tell me your name."

Silence.

"I can't keep calling you nothing."

A pause.

"Maybe you prefer that."

Her eyes came up.

Held mine.

Longer than before.

Then dropped.

She looked fragile, like someone who had witnessed event she can't explain.

No answer.

But something passed between us. The mate bond.

I felt it.

I have never desired anything in my life before, more than my desire for this woman seated here with me.

The king must have heard, nothing goes unnoticed before him, but he has not summoned me to as questions.

Which meant one of two things.

Either he truly did not know—

Or he was waiting.

A knock hit the door.

Three sharp strikes.

My wolf reacted instantly.

I stood before the second knock faded.

No one came here.

No one.

I crossed the room and opened the door halfway.

One of the king’s soldiers stood outside.

"General Torvak," he said carefully, not looking past me. "The king requests your presence."

Now.

The room behind me went completely silent.

Slowly, very slowly, I turned my head.

She was already looking at me.

For the first time since I found her—

she looked afraid.