Page 38 of The Cuddle Clause

Of course, that’s when the first buzz shattered the silence.

Then a second.

My phone glowed like a curse in the dark, and I grabbed it off the nightstand.

Lucien. Of course.

I stared at his name, hoping it would go away. It didn’t. What if it was important? What if something had happened? Pack security. Territory breach. Politics. Shit I couldn’t ignore.

I sighed and answered. “Yeah?” I whispered.

Lucien’s voice was calm. Too calm. Crisp, like he was sipping tea and smiling at a chessboard I hadn’t realized I was standing on.

“Have you bonded with Maggie yet?”

I froze. My eyes snapped down to Maggie. Her hand rested over my heart, fingers twitching slightly in her sleep.

“I… no,” I said, trying to keep my voice low. “Not yet.”

“Oh, good,” he said. “That makes things easier.”

My stomach dropped.

“I’ve decided to host a pack bonding ceremony for all the unbonded pairs, instead of letting the two of you bond early on your own,” he went on. “Public, of course. A celebration of future unity, morale, and strength.”

I sat up slightly, tension crawling into my shoulders.

“I’d like you and Maggie to be the headliners. Center of the ritual. Symbolic leaders of the new generation we’re building.”

What the fuck?

“Tomorrow night. And we’ll throw a reception the following day at the mansion for all the newly bonded couples. Huge event. Dancing, food… general merriment. You know the pack loves a good party.”

“Can’t wait,” I said, the words dry and dead in my mouth.

“Perfect.” Lucien hung up without another word.

I stared at the screen until it went black, then dropped the phone like it burned.

The weight of it all crashed down on my chest.

A bonding ceremony. In public. With a woman who didn’t even know the whole truth, who hadn’t agreed to anything more than helping me pull one over on Lucien to buy me some time, who trusted me to protect her from exactly this kind of pressure.

There was no clean way out of it now. No backing out without blowing everything apart.

I hadn’t told her what the bond meant. It was a permanent bond that would link our souls. Once it happened, there’d be no undoing it.

I hadn’t told her because I was a coward.

My breathing turned shallow. Too shallow. I tried to quiet it, not to wake her.

I looked down again. She shifted slightly, nuzzled closer, murmured something that sounded like my name. I kissed the top of her head.

“You mean too much to me to fuck this up,” I whispered again.

The dread didn’t loosen. It tightened. I had twenty-four hours to either ruin everything or change everything. And I had no idea how to do either without losing her in the process.

I stared up at the ceiling as if it could give me answers. No help came.

Maggie. Mags. My girl.

She hadn’t asked for this. She didn’t know what bonding would tie her to. She hadn’t even said she loved me. Hell, I hadn’t said it either. Not out loud. Not in the way it counted.

I wondered if anyone had ever faked their own death at a mating ceremony. Might be worth a Google.

Beside me, Maggie stirred. Her voice was groggy, but alert. “What’s going on?”

I forced a breath. “Nothing important. Just… pack political shit.”

Her fingers brushed my wrist. She always knew when something was off. Always sensed it. I couldn’t lie to her forever, but I couldn’t tell her now, not when she looked so peaceful, so soft and open and mine.

I slid out of the bed. Maggie propped herself on one elbow, brow furrowed.

“Where are you going?” she asked. “Do you want your bed to yourself? Because I can leave if this is too much, if I’m making you uncomfortable or—”

Her voice cracked. I turned back, gut twisting.

“No,” I said a little too quickly. “God, no. That’s not it.” I brushed a hand over her shoulder, let it linger. She leaned into the touch like she didn’t want it to end. “I just need to run.”

Confusion flickered in her eyes.

“When my head gets too full, I shift and run through the woods behind the building. It helps me reset. Shifting’s emotional for me. It’s primal. It’s like… like shedding noise.”

She stayed quiet. Let me say it.

“It’s not you, Mags. You being here is the only thing that’s not overwhelming me right now.”

I grabbed a hoodie from the hook, tugged on my jeans, and tried not to feel like I was running away. But maybe I was.

I hesitated at the door.

“You can stay in here if you want. You don’t have to go back to your room. Sleep in the bed. It smells like you now.” I risked a glance back and tried for a smile. “I kinda like it. Uhm, by the way, I have early patrol duty in the morning, so I won’t be here when you wake up.”

She didn’t say anything. Didn’t push. Didn’t chase.

I stepped into the hall, hands fisting at my sides, the shift already pushing close to the surface.

There was only one more day until the ceremony, and I still didn’t have a damn clue what I was doing.

I headed toward the woods. Toward silence. Space.

And a decision I wasn’t ready to make.

The air outside was sharp, cold, bracing, and it fit my mood perfectly.

My boots crunched over frost-laced leaves. The farther I moved behind the building, the quieter the city became. San Francisco blurred behind me, all sirens and light pollution and deadlines I couldn’t keep. Out here, the world shrank to trees and darkness and cold.

I liked it better this way.

Every inhale burned a little, but the sting helped. It reminded me I still had a body even if everything inside it was caving in. The pain was clean. Simple. Honest.

By the time I reached the clearing, my pulse had started to slow. Cypress and eucalyptus lined the woods, and moonlight caught on a fallen log.

I exhaled through my nose and pulled off my hoodie, then my shirt. Each movement was methodical and intentional. My jeans were next, then socks, then boxers.

One piece at a time. Folded. Stacked. Neat little corners. A ritual I’d repeated more nights than I could count.

The order and control helped when my thoughts were chaos.

I pressed my palm flat to a log, then closed my eyes and called the shift forward.

My bones stretched, cracking and reshaping with dull pressure. My jaw pulled forward. Limbs twisted. Fingers disappeared into paws, claws slicing free with a whisper of pain. My skin rippled, then thickened into fur, black and sleek and familiar.

My mind quieted.

I opened my eyes. Everything was clearer now. Not less complicated, but less loud.

I bolted forward. Wind sliced past my muzzle as I weaved between trees, legs pounding out a rhythm I didn’t have to think about.

Each stride was a release of guilt and shame.

Of the twisting, nauseating ache that lived in my stomach every time I looked at Maggie and remembered what I wasn’t telling her.

I didn’t have to explain myself to the woods. I didn’t have to be smart or sexy or fine. Here, I could just run.

Leaves scattered behind me. Roots snagged at my claws. My lungs burned, and my muscles protested.

I welcomed every second of it.

The clearing opened again. Moonlight touched the frost-covered grass like it was trying to be gentle.

I came to a stop and threw my head back and howled.

Long. Loud. Raw. The sound scraped up my throat like it had claws of its own.

That howl carried everything I hadn’t said out loud: The fear of losing her.

The pressure from Lucien. The guilt of secrets I hadn’t figured out how to untangle.

The shame of being thirty and still having no idea how to hold onto good things without breaking them.

My body trembled, but my mind was quieter. It wasn’t fixed or really okay, but it was quieter. I padded to the edge of the clearing and slunk down beside a wide tree trunk. My sides heaved as I curled my tail tight around my legs like armor.

This body, this form, couldn’t cry, but if I were in my human form right now, I would’ve been sobbing.

Maybe that was why I liked being a wolf better sometimes.

There was no hyperverbal panic spiral here. No pacing. No looping. No overanalyzing every look Maggie gave me, wondering if she felt what I felt or if I was just projecting what I wanted onto someone who’d been kind to me.

As a wolf, everything slowed down. One stream of input at a time. The scent of the eucalyptus bark. The brittle frost against my nose. The faint scurry of something small underground.

That was enough. That was all there was. Not Lucien. Not bonding ceremonies I hadn’t agreed to and couldn’t escape.

Just this. Just me.

I closed my eyes, pressed my nose into the dirt, and let the world go quiet.

I could’ve stayed like that forever. Still.

Unmoving. Tucked into the silence like a secret no one would ever find.

But I couldn’t live as a wolf. Not when Maggie was sleeping in my bed, trusting me with pieces of herself I hadn’t earned.

I wanted to tell her everything. I wanted to look her in the eye and admit everything—the feelings I’d been hiding, what Lucien had required, what bonding really meant. How I’d run out of time to come up with an exit plan.

But what if she left? What if she looked at me and didn’t see a partner, but a liar? What if I told her the truth and lost her before I even got the chance to love her out loud?

My claws dug into the ground.

She deserved a choice. She had to know what she was walking into. And I’d rather her walk away freely than stay because she didn’t understand the consequences.

The thought of her choosing someone else made my chest burn. But forcing a bond, rushing it because Lucien wanted a fucking photo op?

No. I wouldn’t do that to her. I couldn’t.

I opened my eyes. I was calmer now. Grounded. The dirt. The cold. My heartbeat had finally taken on a steady rhythm instead of slamming against my ribs like a warning bell.

Maybe I’d stay like this a little longer. Maybe it was the only way to keep from falling apart before I told her the truth.

Tomorrow was coming whether I wanted it or not. And I still didn’t know how to say the words that might shatter everything.

But I had to try.

Because I loved her.

And no part of me ever wanted to love her with a lie.

The ward-strength tracker hummed in my hand, its pale-blue readout hovering just above baseline. This was my first time having to use it. Thankfully, we had a large enough pack that I only occasionally had to do patrols.

I’d been making slow loops around the property since before sunrise, boots crunching over the frost-stiff grass, the sky a dull gray that promised a clear day if you were patient enough to wait for it.

The readings were steady, nothing special.

Then I caught the faintest hint of flowers and warm skin on the breeze.

I turned, and there she was. Maggie. Top knot messy like she hadn’t even looked in a mirror, oversized hoodie swallowing her frame, the hem brushing her thighs over leggings. And underneath it all… she still smelled like me from last night. My mouth went dry.

She lifted a paper bag in greeting, the corners of her lips curving. “Figured you could use breakfast.”

My chest tightened. Not in that pack-duty way. In the other way. The dangerous one.

I glanced at the tracker. The numbers spiked. Jumped. A clean, bright surge in the readout, like the ley lines had just gotten a shot of pure adrenaline. I blinked, tapped the side of the device, checked again. Still high.

“Ran into the other guy on patrol,” she said, coming closer, voice casual. “The one who talks like he’s narrating a history podcast? He pointed me this way.”

“Tyson,” I said absently, watching the numbers hold steady as she closed the space between us.

When she reached me, she handed over the bag, and the smell of fresh bread and coffee joined the scent of her, dizzying and warm. The tracker pulsed brighter. My pulse matched it.

“You didn’t have to—” I started, but she shook her head.

“I wanted to.”

The words landed low in my chest, unknotting something inside me. Just like that, the static I carried—the constant hum in my bones—smoothed out.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I cupped her cheek, my thumb brushing the soft line of her jaw.

She leaned in, eyes steady on mine. The first brush of her mouth against mine was slow, testing.

I slid my hand into her hair and deepened the kiss, tasting her, savoring the quiet. No audience. No performance. Just her.

When we broke apart, she smiled up at me, and I found myself saying, “Thank you.”

And I didn’t mean just for breakfast.

I looked down at the tracker again. Still climbing.

It’s just the magic trying to push us to bond. That had to be it. I pushed that from my mind.

I slipped the device into my jacket pocket, hiding it from view.