Untitled

Though letting himself into your apartment like this was nothing new, had become a part of your routine for months at this point, if you're honest, there was something that had been feeling different about Valko's visits to you lately. Less vexing and more… comforting.

An increased awareness of him, maybe? The sound of his voice. His size. The way his laugh and personality managed to fill the room more than his bulky body. Of the way he always tripped over your living room rug or tried to sneak a rub of his scent into every pillow. Of the way he stood so close when he spoke to you, capturing you in the sweet honey of his eyes.

It was something warm that pulsed in your chest, something intimate that had started to hook your gaze to his mouth and magnetize your palms to his skin even today, when you're at your lowest.

His right ear twitches at the sound of his name as he grabs your phone from the floor, a crease of distaste scrunching his nose when he clicks on the screen to stop the noise and tsks, "Looks like my 'dogs are better than cats' speech needs some work."

"Maybe I'll be more in the mood to hear you out–" you take your phone back and set it on the table with a huff, "–when my 'please use the damn front door' speech finally penetrates that thick skull of yours."

A crooked grin scrawls over his face. The pointed tips of his incisors reflecting the dim light of the small lamp you'd flicked on purely to save you from feeling like a complete gremlin while you moped this evening.

"Gonna tell you the same thing I tell Ma every time she says that." He unfurls from the crouching position he'd been in and drops his weight beside you, making your normally sizeable loveseat suddenly feel cramped. "Processing info is for the ears, not the skull."

Resting your cheek in your palm, you narrow your eyes at him with a considering hum.

"What?" Your uninvited houseguest turns to face you, eliciting a concerning creak from the loveseat as his knee comes up to rest on the cushion and his arm drapes over the back. An oversized paw just shy of brushing your shoulder. "What d'you mean, 'hm?'"

"Trespasser, jumpscaring people, terrible manners, and a smart ass to your mother?" You note each transgression by holding up a finger. "No wonder you're always prowling around Linkon alone."

"Hey, hey! Woah, woah, hold on." His hand darts forward, covering yours like it'll hide the evidence. "No– I mean– sure I may be some of those things, but trust me," he puts one of your fingers down and leans forward, another sad groan coming from below the cushion as he rests his elbow on his knee. "I wouldn't be sitting here, or hanging out with you – or breathing – if I were a smart ass to my mother."

Despite yourself, you feel the corner of your lip twitch, the closest you’ve come to a smile all day.

It surprises you how naturally it comes, how much lighter you feel, as you take in his easy grin, his warm palms, his artless gaze. Makes you worry that you're becoming used to this feeling, to something you might be misreading.

"Why?"

"Well, she has this really brutal way of grabbing you by the ear and–"

"No–" the word dissolves on a giggle that has both his ears twitching and an expression you can't quite interpret crossing his face. "I mean, why are you sitting here? Hanging out with me?"

"Oh. I kind of–" He stops, a hint of pink creeping onto his cheeks as he looks down at your still-linked hands. "I mean, I sorta felt like something was… off. With you." You're suddenly glad for the loss of his gaze as he starts to fiddle with your fingers, pressing the pads of his fingers to the tops of your nails as if to test their sharpness. "It's like a.. tug?"

Your mind races with panic as you realize just how much your attraction to him has been tugging at you over his last few visits. "Are you saying that with this– this bond or whatever, you can feel my emotions?"

"Nah, it's not like that." You hope he can't see the stark relief in your gaze when his eyes meet yours again, letting go of your hand to press a palm to the center of his chest. "It's not emotions that call me, it's, well… you. Calling me, that is. Needing me. Or, pulling at me, more like."

Your brows arc upward. "Like a leash?"

His head shoots back dramatically, paired with a groan that sounds almost as distressed as the loveseat still suffering under his weight. "Mercy, little hellion. Let a man keep at least a little dignity." He shakes his head with a bark of self-deprecating laughter. "But yeah. You've got me leashed up good. Happy?"

His question is gentle but pointed, hopeful. His frame still leaning over you, an umbrella shielding you from the sadness and negativity that have been pelting you all day.

Your chest warms at the sight, making it all the harder to respond with a sad smile and the shake of your head as the all the reasons you're not happy come flooding back.

"Alright," he says easily, unphased and unrelenting. A considering look enters his eyes. "Just means I've gotta take more drastic measures here."

In a blur of movements you barely have time to process, he turns his back to you, kicks off his boots – an oddly polite gesture that has you reconsidering just how serious he was about that leash comment – and flops backward. The broad span of his shoulders forces your bent knees down to accommodate the weight of his head as it nestles into your thighs.

"V-Valko! What are you doing?" you stutter, heartbeat galloping as the scent of amber and pine and him wash over you. His ear twitches as he takes your awkwardly hovering hands, placing one behind the wolf ear on his right and the other behind the human ear on his left.

"There," he says with a wiggle of his shoulders, like your thighs are a pillow he's nestling into.

When he notices your hands haven't budged, he gives you an expectant look, nudging the sides of his head into your palms until your lips twitch and your fingers start to move.

"This is your drastic measure?"

He hums in response, eyelashes fluttering as your nails scrape gently over a rose-coloured mix of silky hair and plush fur.

"And this is supposed to…" The question trails off but your hands continue.

He shrugs, the heat of his shoulders anchoring your thighs as one of his arms sneaks around your waist.

"I dunno, distract you? Annoy you, comfort you, take your pick." His eyes lock onto yours, sincere, earnest. "Whatever you need."

The combination of his touch and his words act like a stick of dynamite, blasting through the boulder of tension and worry that's been sitting on your chest all day.

You take a deep breath as he sighs in what you instinctually know is relief. And for the first time since he's mentioned this "bond" of yours, you think, maybe this thing goes both ways.

The thought that you might be starting to figure him out as well as he always seems to understand you brings a small smile to your face.

His lips mirror yours. "That's what I like to see," he says, voice low.

You roll your eyes and flick his ear to disguise the way your stomach flips when the praise rumbles through your thighs, flexing them to jostle him and joke, "What? Me being suffocated?"

His finger comes up to tap the end of your nose with a self-assured grin. "Stop pretending you dont like it, I saw that weighted blanket on your bed." You're not sure if it's you or the loveseat that squeaks when he tugs you into his face and nuzzles into your stomach. "Wanna tell me what's got you down?"

There's something about Valko's bluntness, about his willingness to tackle everything head-on, that catches you more off-guard than his casual and abundant displays of affection ever do. It's straightforward, without artifice. And though there's no hesitation in his request, there's somehow no pressure in it either. As if no response you give him could ever result in offense or resentment or awkwardness, making it feel like the most natural thing in the world to tell the unvarnished truth.

So you do.

"It's just… everything? I don't know, it's all piling up. Like, there's work, lack of sleep, friends I'm not keeping up with, not to mention the general state of the world."

You pause, finding his attentive gaze already on you when you look down to see if you're making any sense. He nods encouragingly, the ears on his head twitching in unison like an attentive audience.

"So I guess I've just been thinking about it all and it feels a little overwhelming. Right here." You press a hand to your chest. "And… heavy, I guess. Like–" You raise a pointed brow. "Like getting crushed by a giant mutt on my own sofa."

His jaw drops in dramatic affront. “You– did you just-” He snaps into a sitting position, your loveseat groaning in despair before he points a finger at himself, as if there could be anyone else you were talking about. “Mutt?! Oh you just crossed a line, you hellion.”

Any response you might’ve had morphs into a high-pitched squeal as you’re scooped up by a muscular arm and thrown over his shoulder.

“Valko! What are you doing? Put me down,” you manage through giggles and laughter as he hauls you to the bedroom with what sounds like a muttered 'I’ll show you a giant mutt.'

You land on the mattress with a breathless oomph, the stray laughs bubbling from your throat feeling foreign but welcome as Valko descends over your figure in an army crawl, finally stopping when you're nose to nose.

Your chests meet on each breath as he reaches up to brush hair from your face. His eyes seem more yellow than amber in the dim light, like marigolds, and you can't think of anything more fitting for the resilient, protective man above you.

"Hi," you breathe, grinning wide.

"Hello, gorgeous," he murmurs, darting a glance at your lips that has your heartbeat pounding against your ribs.

The shadow of his tail swishes behind him as he lowers his weight onto you, fitting his body over yours in a way that anchors and comforts you rather than stifles you.

"Better?" He mumbles into your neck, the heat of his breath awakening gooseflesh over your collarbones. "You know, now that you've made my pedigree your punching bag?"

"Yeah, actually," you realize with a giggle, fingers brushing over the soft bristles of his undercut. "I do."

You haven't laughed this much in a while. In fact, despite being pinned under the heaviest man you know, you haven't felt this light for a few weeks now, you think, which was… the last time he visited you. You close your eyes briefly, mourning the loss of your sanity at the realization that he was right earlier. You had needed him.

"Then listen to me real quick." Your hand slips to his jaw when he raises his head, his smile smaller, his eyes intent. "Next time you feel overwhelmed, or if it's all feeling like too much, you don't have to isolate yourself, or doomscroll, or muscle through it alone. I know I look like I'm all brains but I can help carry things. So just call me, yeah?"

You smile, agreeing with a small nod, pausing before you joke, "With the leash?"

"Okay, who's the smart ass now?" he mutters with a shake of his head, crooked grin back in place. "I meant with a phone. But the leash works too, I guess."

"What's it like?" you ask, curious for the first time since you've learned of it.

"The bond?" His eyes flicker between your eyes and your lips, a knuckle tracing your cheek. "It's like one of those less traveled paths in the woods. Barely visible to the naked eye, but once you find it and start walking on it, everything starts to feel… right."

"Your chest gets really warm and you have this zappy feeling in your gut." His lips tip up in a faraway smile as his eyes follow the path his knuckle makes over your ear, your neck, your collarbones. "Everything feels possible when it's there. Lighter. And when it's gone? Anything you do feels wrong. Empty."

"But…" You swallow past the heartbeat in your throat. "I thought you couldn't feel my emotions," you protest weakly.

A spark ignites in his eyes, electric enough to charge the air between you as his expression morphs into what you can only identify as a primal satisfaction. He inhales deeply, as if he's trying to memorize the scent of this moment, holding your gaze as his eyelids lower.

"I can't," he breathes, so close his nose brushes against yours when he shakes his head. "Those were all mine."

Your lips part, tongue hovering in wait between your teeth as his palm comes up under your chin, fingers settling on both sides of your jaw to draw you in. Your eyes shut as his lips descend over yours, and despite the warmth of his palm, the first brush of his tongue feel like being doused in flame. You wrap your arms around his neck on a moan, humming when he tilts your head to lick into your mouth again and again.

"Valko." The soft, fuzzy sensation of his buzzed hair grazes your knuckles and he sighs into your mouth, as if you're breathing life back into him with the sound of his name.

You take the chance to nip at his lip, holding it hostage between yours until he answers in kind. The sharpness of his teeth like bee stings on your mouth, soothed only by the sweet honey of a tongue that's licking, tasting, consuming the flushed skin between your lips and your throat.

His body sinks into yours, each of his muscles and contours taking shape around yours like heated metal, a weapon being forged for its master, its weight the heaviest thing you'll ever have to carry again.

➻➻ MASTERLIST

NOTE: They can take my undomesticated wolf man from me in the game but he will live on as a terrible house guest in my delusions forever xoxo

Though letting himself into your apartment like this was nothing new, had become a part of your routine for months at this point, if you're honest, there was something that had been feeling different about Valko's visits to you lately. Less vexing and more… comforting.

An increased awareness of him, maybe? The sound of his voice. His size. The way his laugh and personality managed to fill the room more than his bulky body. Of the way he always tripped over your living room rug or tried to sneak a rub of his scent into every pillow. Of the way he stood so close when he spoke to you, capturing you in the sweet honey of his eyes.

It was something warm that pulsed in your chest, something intimate that had started to hook your gaze to his mouth and magnetize your palms to his skin even today, when you're at your lowest.

His right ear twitches at the sound of his name as he grabs your phone from the floor, a crease of distaste scrunching his nose when he clicks on the screen to stop the noise and tsks, "Looks like my 'dogs are better than cats' speech needs some work."

"Maybe I'll be more in the mood to hear you out–" you take your phone back and set it on the table with a huff, "–when my 'please use the damn front door' speech finally penetrates that thick skull of yours."

A crooked grin scrawls over his face. The pointed tips of his incisors reflecting the dim light of the small lamp you'd flicked on purely to save you from feeling like a complete gremlin while you moped this evening.

"Gonna tell you the same thing I tell Ma every time she says that." He unfurls from the crouching position he'd been in and drops his weight beside you, making your normally sizeable loveseat suddenly feel cramped. "Processing info is for the ears, not the skull."

Resting your cheek in your palm, you narrow your eyes at him with a considering hum.

"What?" Your uninvited houseguest turns to face you, eliciting a concerning creak from the loveseat as his knee comes up to rest on the cushion and his arm drapes over the back. An oversized paw just shy of brushing your shoulder. "What d'you mean, 'hm?'"

"Trespasser, jumpscaring people, terrible manners, and a smart ass to your mother?" You note each transgression by holding up a finger. "No wonder you're always prowling around Linkon alone."

"Hey, hey! Woah, woah, hold on." His hand darts forward, covering yours like it'll hide the evidence. "No– I mean– sure I may be some of those things, but trust me," he puts one of your fingers down and leans forward, another sad groan coming from below the cushion as he rests his elbow on his knee. "I wouldn't be sitting here, or hanging out with you – or breathing – if I were a smart ass to my mother."

Despite yourself, you feel the corner of your lip twitch, the closest you’ve come to a smile all day.

It surprises you how naturally it comes, how much lighter you feel, as you take in his easy grin, his warm palms, his artless gaze. Makes you worry that you're becoming used to this feeling, to something you might be misreading.

"Why?"

"Well, she has this really brutal way of grabbing you by the ear and–"

"No–" the word dissolves on a giggle that has both his ears twitching and an expression you can't quite interpret crossing his face. "I mean, why are you sitting here? Hanging out with me?"

"Oh. I kind of–" He stops, a hint of pink creeping onto his cheeks as he looks down at your still-linked hands. "I mean, I sorta felt like something was… off. With you." You're suddenly glad for the loss of his gaze as he starts to fiddle with your fingers, pressing the pads of his fingers to the tops of your nails as if to test their sharpness. "It's like a.. tug?"

Your mind races with panic as you realize just how much your attraction to him has been tugging at you over his last few visits. "Are you saying that with this– this bond or whatever, you can feel my emotions?"

"Nah, it's not like that." You hope he can't see the stark relief in your gaze when his eyes meet yours again, letting go of your hand to press a palm to the center of his chest. "It's not emotions that call me, it's, well… you. Calling me, that is. Needing me. Or, pulling at me, more like."

Your brows arc upward. "Like a leash?"

His head shoots back dramatically, paired with a groan that sounds almost as distressed as the loveseat still suffering under his weight. "Mercy, little hellion. Let a man keep at least a little dignity." He shakes his head with a bark of self-deprecating laughter. "But yeah. You've got me leashed up good. Happy?"

His question is gentle but pointed, hopeful. His frame still leaning over you, an umbrella shielding you from the sadness and negativity that have been pelting you all day.

Your chest warms at the sight, making it all the harder to respond with a sad smile and the shake of your head as the all the reasons you're not happy come flooding back.

"Alright," he says easily, unphased and unrelenting. A considering look enters his eyes. "Just means I've gotta take more drastic measures here."

In a blur of movements you barely have time to process, he turns his back to you, kicks off his boots – an oddly polite gesture that has you reconsidering just how serious he was about that leash comment – and flops backward. The broad span of his shoulders forces your bent knees down to accommodate the weight of his head as it nestles into your thighs.

"V-Valko! What are you doing?" you stutter, heartbeat galloping as the scent of amber and pine and him wash over you. His ear twitches as he takes your awkwardly hovering hands, placing one behind the wolf ear on his right and the other behind the human ear on his left.

"There," he says with a wiggle of his shoulders, like your thighs are a pillow he's nestling into.

When he notices your hands haven't budged, he gives you an expectant look, nudging the sides of his head into your palms until your lips twitch and your fingers start to move.

"This is your drastic measure?"

He hums in response, eyelashes fluttering as your nails scrape gently over a rose-coloured mix of silky hair and plush fur.

"And this is supposed to…" The question trails off but your hands continue.

He shrugs, the heat of his shoulders anchoring your thighs as one of his arms sneaks around your waist.

"I dunno, distract you? Annoy you, comfort you, take your pick." His eyes lock onto yours, sincere, earnest. "Whatever you need."

The combination of his touch and his words act like a stick of dynamite, blasting through the boulder of tension and worry that's been sitting on your chest all day.

You take a deep breath as he sighs in what you instinctually know is relief. And for the first time since he's mentioned this "bond" of yours, you think, maybe this thing goes both ways.

The thought that you might be starting to figure him out as well as he always seems to understand you brings a small smile to your face.

His lips mirror yours. "That's what I like to see," he says, voice low.

You roll your eyes and flick his ear to disguise the way your stomach flips when the praise rumbles through your thighs, flexing them to jostle him and joke, "What? Me being suffocated?"

His finger comes up to tap the end of your nose with a self-assured grin. "Stop pretending you dont like it, I saw that weighted blanket on your bed." You're not sure if it's you or the loveseat that squeaks when he tugs you into his face and nuzzles into your stomach. "Wanna tell me what's got you down?"

There's something about Valko's bluntness, about his willingness to tackle everything head-on, that catches you more off-guard than his casual and abundant displays of affection ever do. It's straightforward, without artifice. And though there's no hesitation in his request, there's somehow no pressure in it either. As if no response you give him could ever result in offense or resentment or awkwardness, making it feel like the most natural thing in the world to tell the unvarnished truth.

So you do.

"It's just… everything? I don't know, it's all piling up. Like, there's work, lack of sleep, friends I'm not keeping up with, not to mention the general state of the world."

You pause, finding his attentive gaze already on you when you look down to see if you're making any sense. He nods encouragingly, the ears on his head twitching in unison like an attentive audience.

"So I guess I've just been thinking about it all and it feels a little overwhelming. Right here." You press a hand to your chest. "And… heavy, I guess. Like–" You raise a pointed brow. "Like getting crushed by a giant mutt on my own sofa."

His jaw drops in dramatic affront. “You– did you just-” He snaps into a sitting position, your loveseat groaning in despair before he points a finger at himself, as if there could be anyone else you were talking about. “Mutt?! Oh you just crossed a line, you hellion.”

Any response you might’ve had morphs into a high-pitched squeal as you’re scooped up by a muscular arm and thrown over his shoulder.

“Valko! What are you doing? Put me down,” you manage through giggles and laughter as he hauls you to the bedroom with what sounds like a muttered 'I’ll show you a giant mutt.'

You land on the mattress with a breathless oomph, the stray laughs bubbling from your throat feeling foreign but welcome as Valko descends over your figure in an army crawl, finally stopping when you're nose to nose.

Your chests meet on each breath as he reaches up to brush hair from your face. His eyes seem more yellow than amber in the dim light, like marigolds, and you can't think of anything more fitting for the resilient, protective man above you.

"Hi," you breathe, grinning wide.

"Hello, gorgeous," he murmurs, darting a glance at your lips that has your heartbeat pounding against your ribs.

The shadow of his tail swishes behind him as he lowers his weight onto you, fitting his body over yours in a way that anchors and comforts you rather than stifles you.

"Better?" He mumbles into your neck, the heat of his breath awakening gooseflesh over your collarbones. "You know, now that you've made my pedigree your punching bag?"

"Yeah, actually," you realize with a giggle, fingers brushing over the soft bristles of his undercut. "I do."

You haven't laughed this much in a while. In fact, despite being pinned under the heaviest man you know, you haven't felt this light for a few weeks now, you think, which was… the last time he visited you. You close your eyes briefly, mourning the loss of your sanity at the realization that he was right earlier. You had needed him.

"Then listen to me real quick." Your hand slips to his jaw when he raises his head, his smile smaller, his eyes intent. "Next time you feel overwhelmed, or if it's all feeling like too much, you don't have to isolate yourself, or doomscroll, or muscle through it alone. I know I look like I'm all brains but I can help carry things. So just call me, yeah?"

You smile, agreeing with a small nod, pausing before you joke, "With the leash?"

"Okay, who's the smart ass now?" he mutters with a shake of his head, crooked grin back in place. "I meant with a phone. But the leash works too, I guess."

"What's it like?" you ask, curious for the first time since you've learned of it.

"The bond?" His eyes flicker between your eyes and your lips, a knuckle tracing your cheek. "It's like one of those less traveled paths in the woods. Barely visible to the naked eye, but once you find it and start walking on it, everything starts to feel… right."

"Your chest gets really warm and you have this zappy feeling in your gut." His lips tip up in a faraway smile as his eyes follow the path his knuckle makes over your ear, your neck, your collarbones. "Everything feels possible when it's there. Lighter. And when it's gone? Anything you do feels wrong. Empty."

"But…" You swallow past the heartbeat in your throat. "I thought you couldn't feel my emotions," you protest weakly.

A spark ignites in his eyes, electric enough to charge the air between you as his expression morphs into what you can only identify as a primal satisfaction. He inhales deeply, as if he's trying to memorize the scent of this moment, holding your gaze as his eyelids lower.

"I can't," he breathes, so close his nose brushes against yours when he shakes his head. "Those were all mine."

Your lips part, tongue hovering in wait between your teeth as his palm comes up under your chin, fingers settling on both sides of your jaw to draw you in. Your eyes shut as his lips descend over yours, and despite the warmth of his palm, the first brush of his tongue feel like being doused in flame. You wrap your arms around his neck on a moan, humming when he tilts your head to lick into your mouth again and again.

"Valko." The soft, fuzzy sensation of his buzzed hair grazes your knuckles and he sighs into your mouth, as if you're breathing life back into him with the sound of his name.

You take the chance to nip at his lip, holding it hostage between yours until he answers in kind. The sharpness of his teeth like bee stings on your mouth, soothed only by the sweet honey of a tongue that's licking, tasting, consuming the flushed skin between your lips and your throat.

His body sinks into yours, each of his muscles and contours taking shape around yours like heated metal, a weapon being forged for its master, its weight the heaviest thing you'll ever have to carry again.

➻➻ MASTERLIST

NOTE: They can take my undomesticated wolf man from me in the game but he will live on as a terrible house guest in my delusions forever xoxo

“More than people?”

“Depends on the people.”

You laughed before you could stop yourself, and relief moved through him all at once, softening his shoulders, loosening the frightened line of his mouth. He'd been nervous all morning. Badly nervous. Valko, who could grin with blood on his teeth and make danger look like a door he'd simply forgotten to knock on, had spent the whole walk here giving you warnings no sane person could have prepared for.

Do not let Mika read your palm. He makes things up and then believes them.

Do not compliment Baba's curtains unless you want curtains.

Do not say you're full.

And, most importantly, if anyone mentions the soup incident, Valko had said, grave as a condemned man, they're lying.

You had asked what the soup incident was.

He had started to walk faster.

Now he stood before the old wooden door with your fingers caught in his, trying to look calm and producing, somehow, the exact expression of a wolf about to be bathed.

“Valko,” you said softly.

“Yes?”

“You're shaking.”

“I'm not shaking.”

“You are.”

“I’m containing myself.”

“From what?”

“Hereditary embarrassment.”

The door flew open.

A girl about his age stood on the other side, dark-eyed and grinning, with flour on her cheek and murder in her posture. She took one look at Valko’s hand around yours, then lifted her gaze to his face with the slow delight of someone finding a knife exactly where she had hoped one would be.

A slow smile cut across her face.

“Oh,” she smirked. “So this is why you changed your shirt twice.”

Valko made a sound. Small, wounded, entirely unlike a wolf.

“I changed once.”

“You changed twice. The first shirt was the blue one. The second was the one that made you look like you were going to court. This...This is the third.”

His ears went red.

The woman held out her hand to you. “Milena. His sister.”

“Unfortunately,” Valko added.

“Fortunately. Without me, you'd still think soap is optional in winter.”

“It isn't optional.”

“Because of me.”

You took Milena's hand. Her grip was warm, firm, and full of judgement she hadn't yet decided to use.

Behind her, the house breathed out heat. Bread, onions, some in old wood, something sweet cooling on a counter. There were voices everywhere, layered and crossing. One person laughing while another complained, a child humming under a table, chairs scraping, a kettle whistling like a bird losing patience.

Milena stepped aside. “Come in before Baba starts saying we were raised by wolves.”

Valko muttered, “We were.”

She looked at him. “And still, some of us learned manners.”

You crossed the threshold. The house was smaller than the noise made it seem, or maybe the noise had simply learned to fill every corner. Framed photographs climbed the walls in crooked rows. Herbs hung drying above the kitchen window. Nothing matched, and yet everything looked touched, mended, argued over... kept.

Valko leaned close as he helped you out of your coat.

“Last chance,” he whispered. “We can run.”

You looked past him to where an old woman stood near the stove, hands folded over her apron, watching you with bright, wolfish eyes.

“Too late,” you whispered back. “I think she heard you.”

“I hear everything,” the old woman said.

Valko went still.

Milena smiled into her shoulder.

The old woman crossed the kitchen with the slow authority of someone who had ruled this house before any of them had teeth. She was small, broad in the shoulders, silver-haired, with flour on her wrist and no softness wasted in her face. The softness, you realised, was elsewhere. In the bread covered by a towel, in the chair pulled out before you reached it, in the way Valko lowered his head without being asked when she came close.

“Baba,” he said, and for the first time that day, his voice lost its jokes.

She, of course, ignored him.

Instead, she took your face between both hands.

Her palms smelled of rosemary, yeast, and soap. Her thumbs rested beneath your cheekbones, and for one strange second the whole house seemed to lean closer. The cousins, the kettle, the old boards, even Valko, holding his breath beside you.

“So,” Baba Vesna said. “You are the reason he forgets to eat.”

“I eat,” Valko protested.

Teta Marika appeared by the stove, wooden spoon in hand. “You came here last week, opened the pantry, stared at a sack of potatoes for six minutes, then said, ‘I wonder what she’s doing.’”

“That was taken out of context.”

“What was the context?” you asked, because love had made you brave and terrible.

Valko looked betrayed. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”

A boy leaning backwards on his chair nearly lost balance from laughing, another cousin caught the chair by its back without looking up from peeling an apple.

Baba Vesna patted your cheek once and released you. “Sit, dušo. Eat something before my family embarrass me properly.”

Valko gave a strangled laugh. “Before?”

No one listened to him.

You were placed at the long wooden table as if the decision had been made before you arrived. A bowl appeared, then bread, then butter, then a small plate of pickled vegetables. Teta Marika, Valko's aunt, kissed the air beside your cheeks and took the small gift you had brought. Mika announced that he already knew your favourite colour from Valko’s face. Luka told him that was the stupidest sentence ever spoken in the kitchen, which Mika accepted as praise. The little one beneath the table emerged, solemn and bread-dusted, and introduced himself as Niko.

“Are you going to marry him?” Niko asked.

Valko walked directly into the side of a chair.

The whole kitchen paused. You pressed your lips together.

Milena leaned against the doorway, radiant with cruelty. “Careful, Niko. Val only has two knees.”

“Niko,” Teta Marika turned from the stove, wooden spoon in hand. “We ask guests if they want juice first.”

Niko nodded, absorbing this etiquette with grave importance. “Do you want juice before you marry him?”

Valko covered his face with both hands. You bit down on your smile so hard it almost hurt. This wasn't what you had expected.

Some foolish, frightened part of you had imagined a den in the old sense. Teeth, watchful eyes, a family arranged around blood and law, waiting to decide whether your bones could be allowed near theirs. Valko had never spoken of them casually. Whenever he said home, something tender and embarrassed moved through him, as though the word itself had fingers and knew exactly where to touch.

Now you sat beneath a crooked lamp while his grandmother tore bread with her hands and put the first piece on your plate.

“Eat,” Baba Vesna said.

You obeyed.

The bread was warm enough to steam between your fingers. The crust cracked softly, butter melted into it in golden lines. Across the table, Valko watched you take the first bite as if your mouth held judgment from heaven.

You chewed. Swallowed.

“It’s delicious.”

Baba Vesna clicked her tongue. “Of course it is wonderful. I made it.”

Mika leaned towards you. “He talked about you after the market yesterday.”

Valko’s hand hit the table. “No.”

“Yes, you did” Luka said sticking his tongue out.

“No.”

“You said, and I quote, 'she chooses fruit with such care'.”

The table went quiet for half a breath, your hand stilled around the bread. Valko looked at Luka as if betrayal had entered the room wearing his cousin’s face.

“That was private.”

“You said it in the kitchen.”

“That makes it private.”

Milena sat across from you and rested her chin in her hand. “He also said you have kind hands.”

Valko’s mouth opened, nothing came out. Your heart did something foolish inside your chest.

The teasing had worked him bright and flustered, but beneath it, something softer trembled. He was embarrassed, yes. Horribly, so. Beautifully, so. Yet the thing underneath was more dangerous than shame. This was exposure. A curtain pulled open in a room he had spent so long keeping dim.

He had spoken of you here.

At this table. In this warm, loud house. To these people who teased him because they knew what he looked like with no armour on. He had brought you home long before he ever brought your body through the door.

Baba Vesna filled your bowl with soup.

“He was always like this,” she said.

“Baba, please.”

“He was a strange child,” she said.

Valko groaned. “Please.”

“A sweet child,” Teta Marika corrected.

“A dramatic child,” Luka said.

“A biting child,” Milena added.

Valko pointed at her. “You bit first.”

“You looked biteable.”

“You see what I mean?” Valko turned to you with helpless outrage. “This is what I survived.”

There was love in it, the kind that had been cooked too long and reduced into something strong enough to stain. They spoke to him as if they had known every version of him and chosen, again and again, to keep putting food in front of whichever one came home.

You looked at him while he argued with Mika about whether a stolen spoon counted as a childhood trauma.

He caught you looking. For a moment, the noise thinned.

There he was.

Valko with his hair refusing every law of decency. Valko trying so hard to survive his own family and failing beautifully. His eyes met yours with a nervous brightness that made you want to reach across the table and be cruel to every fear that had ever found him.

Then Niko pointed his spoon at you.

“Are you keeping him?”

The kitchen stopped.

Valko made a tiny sound into his bowl.

Milena closed her eyes as if praying for patience and finding none. “Niko.”

“What? Mika said maybe she is keeping him.”

His gaze dropped to the table, to the bread by his hand, to the small old cuts in the wood. The blush still clung to him, but it had changed into something quieter now. Hope, perhaps. Or terror wearing hope’s coat.

You could have laughed. Everyone would have let you. It would have been easy to throw the question back into the room like a toy and watch them tear it apart.

Instead, beneath the table, you found Valko’s hand.

His fingers closed around yours at once.

“I’d like to,” you said.

The house held itself still for half a breath.

Then Baba Vesna nodded, once, as if some old contract had been signed in soup and honey.

“Good,” she said. “He is difficult, but warm.”

Valko bowed his head.

His shoulders shook.

At first you thought he was upset. Then you realised he was laughing, quietly, helplessly, with one hand over his mouth and the other holding yours under the table like he meant to keep it there until winter.

Mika groaned. “Ah, look at him. Finished. Completely finished.”

Milena reached for the pickles. “Good. He needed finishing.”

Teta Marika smiled into her tea. “Eat more, zlato. You will need strength.”

“For Valko?” you asked.

“For all of us.”

Dinner became less a meal than a storm with chairs.

Bowls moved, hands reached, stories climbed over one another and died unfinished because someone remembered a better accusation. Luka asked you practical questions in a calm voice: where you liked to walk, whether Valko had shown you the old river path, whether he still pretended not to like sweet things. Mika tried to read your palm and declared that you were fated to own a troublesome dog.

“That's just Valko,” Milena said.

“I am not a dog.”

“True,” Luka said. “Dogs listen.”

Valko began quietly placing the best pieces of food on your plate.

A soft carrot, the inside of the bread, a dumpling he pretended to move away from himself and somehow abandoned beside your spoon. He was not subtle. He had never been subtle. He was a wolf trying to hide a whole deer behind a napkin.

You noticed on the fourth offering.

His family noticed on the first.

Baba Vesna said nothing until Valko tried to give you the last honey cake. Then she leaned back in her chair and looked at him over her tea.

“Ah,” she said.

Valko froze.

It was one syllable. It landed like a bell.

“What?” he said.

“No, no.” She waved him off. “Continue. Starve for romance. Very noble.”

Mika threw his head back.

You picked up the honey cake before Valko could die at the table and broke it in two, placing half on his plate. “There,” you said. “No starving.”

He looked at the cake.

Then he looked at you.

His expression opened in a way that made the room, somehow, feel too small for your heart. It opened with that unguarded, bewildered softness he sometimes gave you when kindness arrived before he had prepared himself to receive it.

Milena saw it.

Her teasing quieted.

For a moment, she only watched him with something old and protective in her face.

Then she stood. “Come help me with plates.”

Valko blinked. “Me?”

“Her.” Milena pointed at you.

Valko frowned. “Why?”

“Because I said so.”

“That's not a reason.”

“It has worked on you for years.”

You rose before he could protest again. Milena took two plates from the table and handed you none of them, which told you at once that this had nothing to do with helping.

She led you down a narrow hallway lined with photographs.

Behind you, Valko’s voice rose. “Do not interrogate her.”

The hallway smelled faintly of beeswax and dried herbs. The noise of the kitchen softened behind you, still there, still golden, but now wrapped in walls. Milena stopped by a window overlooking the yard and leaned her hip against the sill.

For the first time all evening, she let the smile leave her face.

“He likes you,” she said.

You smiled gently. “I got that impression.”

“No.” Her eyes flicked towards the kitchen. “He likes people easily. He likes old men who tell bad stories, stray cats that scratch him, children who throw rocks at windows because they want attention. Valko is built stupid that way.”

A laugh escaped you.

Milena folded her arms.

“He brings things home,” she continued. “Broken things, angry things. Things he thinks no one else will be gentle with.” Her gaze moved towards the kitchen, where Valko’s voice lifted in protest. “He does not bring people home.”

Your throat tightened.

From the kitchen, Valko shouted, “It wasn't soup. It was stew.”

Mika shouted back, “Stew cannot make a grown man cry.”

“I was overwhelmed by flavour.”

Milena closed her eyes for one second. “Bože, give me strength.”

You laughed softly.

She looked at you again, sharper now.

“He was nervous all week,” she said. “Changed his shirt three times. Asked me if the house smelled too much like onions. Asked Luka if his laugh was strange. Asked Baba if she could please not tell the story about the goat.”

“The goat?”

“Later.” A faint smile touched her mouth. “Maybe never.”

You glanced back towards the kitchen.

He had asked if his laugh was strange.

Something in you ached with such tenderness that it almost felt like anger.

You looked down.

“He didn’t need to worry,”

“He is clumsy with precious things,” she said. “Because he thinks his hands are only good for breaking them, even when he is careful. Especially then.”

“So be kind,” she said. “Or be cruel quickly. He will survive either, but I prefer to know which one I’m dealing with.”

There it was.

The knife under the table. The love with its teeth intact. You didn't resent her for it, you thought, strangely, that you liked her more for it.

“I’m not here to hurt him,”

“Most people aren’t, at first.”

“Milena.”

Milena’s gaze narrowed.

“I don’t know what I’m doing with him,” you admitted.

“With any of this,” you continued. “He makes everything feel…” You searched for the word and hated every pretty one that came. Fated. Wild. Tender. All too polished for the mess he made of your heart. “He makes everything feel like I’ve been walking past a door my whole life, and he is the idiot who opened it with his shoulder.”

Milena stared at you.

Then she laughed once, sharp and startled.

“Oh,” she said. “You’re gone too.”

You looked down, caught.

She seemed satisfied. “Good.”

“Is that approval?”

“That is me deciding not to be difficult.”

“You were being difficult?”

“Dušo,” she said, and now her smile had teeth in it, “I was being polite.”

When you returned to the kitchen, Valko was waiting near the doorway as if he had tried to remain seated and failed.

His eyes moved from you to Milena. “What did you say to her?”

Milena walked past him. “That you were adopted.”

“I’m not.”

“Emotionally, you're a wet dog we found in the rain.”

He watched her go, wounded on principle, then turned to you with genuine concern. “What did she actually say?”

You reached up and brushed flour from his sleeve. “That you’re warm.”

“That was Baba.”

“Family consensus.”

His mouth twitched. “You are enjoying this.”

“I am.”

“You were supposed to be intimidated.”

“By Mika?”

“By the bloodline. The history. The general atmosphere of teeth.”

“Mika told me my palm says I’ll own a dog.”

Valko sighed.

You reached up and plucked the dish towel from his shoulder. “You have flour on your sleeve.”

He looked down, surprised, as if his own body had been making decisions without him. Then he looked back at you, and the kitchen noise faded once more, though this time it was only the two of you making the world small.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

The question was casual enough for anyone else to miss the tremor underneath. You heard it. The naked, waiting part. You thought of his hand shaking outside the door. Baba Vesna taking your face between her palms, of bread steaming in your fingers, of honey cake divided in two, of Milena saying he doesn't bring people home.

“I’m all right,” you said. “Are you?”

Valko smiled too quickly. “I’m alive.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

His smile softened.

For once, he did not joke immediately. It cost him something. You could see it in the way his fingers flexed at his side, reaching for mischief and finding courage instead.

“I wanted them to like you,” he said. “I wanted you to like them.”

“I do”

“I wanted…” He stopped, then laughed under his breath. “I don’t know. Something stupid.”

He looked towards the kitchen, where his family had resumed their noise without mercy. Mika was accusing Luka of stealing the larger piece of cake. Baba Vesna had taken down a tin from the highest shelf, probably containing either biscuits or secrets.

“Valko, stop hiding her. I have photographs.”

Horror returned to his face with magnificent speed.

“No.”

“Yes,”

“No photographs.”

“Naked baby photos,” Mika added.

Valko went pale. “You do not have those.”

Teta Marika’s voice drifted after him, serene and deadly. “We have everything.”

He grabbed your hand. “We’re leaving.”

You let him pull you three steps before Baba Vesna appeared in the doorway holding a small album to her chest.

“Sit,” she said.

Valko sat.

It was remarkable how quickly a wolf could become a grandson.

For the next hour, they showed you the evidence of his life.

Valko missing two front teeth and glaring at the camera as though betrayed by dentistry. Valko asleep under the table with one hand buried in a dog’s fur. Valko at thirteen, all elbows and outrage, holding a fish half his size while crying because he had to put it back.

There was Valko covered in mud, Valko wearing a paper crown, Valko with Milena’s arm hooked around his neck while he pretended to hate her and leaned into her anyway. Valko standing beside Baba Vesna in the garden, holding a basket of tomatoes like he had been entrusted with the fate of nations.

Each photograph was another small door.

You had known him in pieces: the grin, the hunger, the awkward tenderness, the jokes he threw like branches over deep water. Here was the rest of him. Here was the child who had survived becoming himself because these hands had fed him, scolded him, dragged him upright, and remembered his softness when he tried to outgrow it.

At some point, while everyone argued over whether the goat incident happened before or after the soup incident, Valko bent close to you.

“You don’t have to keep looking,” he murmured.

You turned a page.

A tiny Valko stared up from the album, holding a wooden spoon like a sword.

“Yes,” you said. “I do.”

He stared at you.

Then, very briefly, he rested his forehead against your shoulder.

It lasted only a second. A shy, exhausted surrender. No one commented on it, though you knew every person in the room saw. That seemed to be another house rule. They would mock the wound, yes, but they protected the pulse.

Later, when the cups were cleared and the album returned to its shelf of holy embarrassments, you stepped outside for air.

The yard was cold, dark and soft around the edges. Herbs grew beneath the window, yhe old trees leaned towards the house as if listening. Behind you, the kitchen glowed gold, laughter pressing against the glass.

Valko followed after a moment, closing the door carefully behind him.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

You looked at him. “For what?”'

“The interrogation. The photographs. Mika. The marriage question. The soup litigation.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Milena.”

“I like Milena.”

“That means she behaved.”

“She said she was being polite.”

He winced. “Then she liked you.”

You leaned back against the porch railing, and he stood in front of you with his hands in his pockets, rocking once on his heels like he wanted to come closer and had forgotten the law of his own body.

Through the window, you could see Baba Vesna pretending to wipe the table while watching you both with shameless interest. You lifted a hand and waved.

She waved back.

Valko turned, saw her, and groaned. “For the love of...Baba.”

“She loves you.”

“That's her usual excuse for crimes.”

“It’s a good one.”

He looked back at you, and the teasing left him slowly, piece by piece. Out here, with the house at his back, he seemed caught between the wild thing and the loved thing. The wolf and the boy in the paper crown. The man who had brought you to the threshold with shaking hands and still tried to joke like fear could be made harmless if he gave it a funny name.

“Did you mean it?” he asked.

“Which part?”

“When Niko asked if you were keeping me.”

The question came lightly, too lightly. A feather laid over a blade.

You reached for him.

This time, Valko did not hesitate. He came into your space at once, as if pulled by a string tied somewhere behind his ribs. His hands settled at your waist, careful at first, then warmer when you didn't move away.

“I meant it,”

His eyes searched yours.

“For tonight?”

“For longer than that.”

He didn't kiss you immediately. Somehow, that made it worse. He stood there and let the answer enter him, slowly, like someone opening the door to a room he had been told was empty and finding it lit.

Inside, Mika yelled, “Are they kissing?”

Valko dropped his forehead to your shoulder.

“Leave them. He is finally being normal.”

You laughed.

He looked at you then, and the last of his embarrassment broke open into something bright, something almost boyish

“Welcome home,” he said, very softly.

You touched his cheek.

Behind him, the old house breathed and creaked and held its golden noise. Inside, his family waited with tea, teeth, stories, and a place at the table already made yours.

“Welcome home, Valko.”