Painawakened

**AARON'S POV** Nathaniel lay beneath the blankets, pale against the white sheets. Too still. I hated that. One eye was swollen completely shut. Bruises darkened half his face. His mouth was split at one corner, dried blood still caught there despite whoever had cleaned him up. Nathaniel was never still. Even exhausted, there was always something. A comment. A smile. A look that told me exactly what he was thinking before he said a word. The doctor conti

XAVIER POV The shower had been a terrible idea. I'd told myself it would calm me down. Give me a minute to relax. Wash the sweat and wine and nerves off my skin. Instead, it gave me ten uninterrupted minutes alone with my thoughts. Ten minutes to remember that Austin was on the other side of that door. I stepped out of the shower. I could hear him. Just the faint shift of weight on the other side of the door, waiting. I was about to have sex for the first tim

XAVIER POV Christmas was two weeks away. I loved Christmas. Always had. I watched Austin from across the exercise room. He was doing push-ups on the mat, steady and controlled. He moved with that same maddening precision he brought to everything else—nothing wasted, nothing sloppy. When he'd first moved into the house, he'd tried training outside with the rest of us. That lasted four mornings before he admitted the cold was trying to murder his joints. Hence

Austin POV The "wolf pace" was a meat grinder I hadn't seen coming. In the Teams, I'd lived through Hell Week. I knew how to survive on caffeine, spite, and twenty-minute dirt naps. But I was realizing there was a fundamental difference between SEAL endurance and Shifter stamina. The exhaustion had crept up on me. At first it had felt good. The kind of tired that came from being useful. From doing something that mattered. But after four days of patr

Xavier POV I woke up sometime in the middle of the night. The room was dark except for the faint moonlight coming through the window. He hadn't left. Austin rarely slept deeply. Years in the military had seen to that. But his breathing now was slow and even against the back of my neck. His arm was heavy across my waist. The memory of earlier moved through me quietly. His mouth. His hands. I’d handed him the keys to my body and he had taken me to a place

Xavier POV The house smelled incredible when I walked in. I stopped in the doorway. Rich. Deep. Something slow-cooked and wine-dark that hit me somewhere completely unexpected. Austin was at the stove, sleeves pushed up, back to me. He didn't hear me come in. I stood there a second longer than I needed to. "Is that—" "Beef Bourguignon." He didn't turn around. "Two more hours." He'd remembered. One offhand comment I’d made nights ago about

Austin POV My phone buzzed just after sunrise. Xavier: Come to my parents ASAP. No explanation. I was out the door in under five minutes. I stepped into Evelyn’s living room just as the low rumble of an engine rolled up the driveway. The change in them was immediate. Xavier and Nathaniel were already moving by the time I stepped fully into the room, both of them heading for the front door like they’d been waiting for this all morning. I drifted toward th

Austin POV He showed up on the fourth day. I'd been checking. Quietly, without making it obvious — stopping by Aaron's house in the mornings under the pretense of updating Nathaniel on patrol reports, watching for the signs Aaron had described. Strength dropping. Responses slowing. By day three Nathaniel was still unfailingly polite in that way of his that made you feel like you were the most important thing in whatever room he was occupying. But his eyes had gone sli

Austin POV The Greyhaven Pack Community hall smelled like damp cedar, and stale sweat. Outside, the November rain was punishing the roof, but inside, the air was suffocatingly hot. I counted roughly sixty adults scattered across the concrete floor, their bodies shifting in restless, predatory clusters. Teenagers lingered around the back wall. The wolves were bleeding nervous energy, and every single eye kept darting toward Xavier. He stood dead-center beneath the

Austin POV One week later. The house woke before the sun. It had been like that every morning since I'd moved in. By six the yard behind Xavier's place was already alive with the sound of boots hitting dirt, metal weights clanging, wolves shifting forms and shifting back again. Aaron ran the pack like a military unit. And Xavier followed every rule. I leaned against the porch railing, coffee warming my hands while I watched him train. He was

@dboggs9700 Thank you so much

Xavier POV The chessboard was a slaughter. Sade had taken my queen three moves ago and was now quietly dismantling my remaining pawns. Across the living room, Austin sat on the couch, one arm draped along the back, pretending to look at his phone. He wasn't. I could feel his eyes on me every few seconds. I couldn't quite read him. Not yet. Sade moved his knight and took another pawn. "You're distracted," he said mildly. "I need to see Aaron," I muttered.

Sorry for the late reply. Work has been crazy. Just for clarity the ferry runs on Wednesday and Friday Both Wednesday and Friday's have one inbound and one outbound ferry. I haven't re read the book yet. But once I edit this chapter, I will make the ferry schedule clearer.

AUSTIN POV Waking up hurt. My shoulders burned. My throat felt scraped raw. My body hurt all over. For a few seconds I didn't open my eyes. I listened. Wind against glass somewhere. The distant steady pulse of surf. A house on the coast then. I was not in a hospital. Something tugged lightly at the back of my hand. IV line. I opened my eyes. The room was dim. A lamp in the corner throwing warm light across wood floors and dark walls.

AUSTIN POV The last camera was at the northeast corner of the property line. Xavier climbed down from the tree with the empty battery casing in one hand and crossed it off the clipboard without looking. "That's it," he said. Four days. A hundred and twelve cameras. Coastal New England in late October which meant mud and low light and branches that found every gap in your jacket. I had enjoyed every single day of it. I didn't examine that too closely. We