Page 21 of Wild Then Wed
I nod once. “Yeah.”
“At least your family’s good for a while, though, right? Shared household and all that.”
“For now,” I say. “But it won’t take long before it hits the rest of us. Especially my clinic.”
That gets her attention. “Clinic?”
“Vet clinic. In Bozeman.”
Her eyebrows rise, just a little. “You’re a doctor?”
“Technically.”
She tilts her head. “Technically?”
“I’ve seen more testicles than most human doctors, but yeah, more or less.”
She laughs at that—bubbly and a little breathless, like it caught her off guard. It’s the sort of sound that feels like sunshine in a cold room. And I don’t realize how much I want to hear it again until it’s gone.
She shakes her head like she’s trying not to smile again. “Do you always lead with castration talk, or is that just a vet thing?”
“Depends,” I say. “Do you always start your day by telling grown men how idiotic they are? Or is that just a Wren thing?”
That earns me her full smile. And Jesus—it’s a nice one.
Not practiced. Not polite. Just real, like it snuck out of her before she could stop it. All sharp cheekbones and soft edges, like she only lets herself be unguarded when she forgets to be careful.
And then instinct kicks in. That familiar pullback. That internal warning that reminds me why I don’t go there anymore. Why I stopped letting people get close.
There’s something about grief that doesn’t let you move forward. You don’t stand still, exactly—but you don’t arrive anywhere new, either. You just orbit the life you had. I’ve built walls around that orbit. Work. The gym. Distance. Predictability. It’s how I survive.
Because once you know what it’s like to lose everything, you stop letting yourself want anything.
So I keep my walls up. I keep my life clean and distant. I don’t make room for soft smiles and bright laughs and women with eyes like hers.
But I look at her, really look, and something flickers in my chest—brief and inconvenient. It’s not attraction, not exactly. It’s recognition. She’s got that same quiet caution I recognize in myself. It doesn’t come from shyness, but from surviving too many things you didn’t ask for.
She stands like someone who’s had to carry her own weight for a long time. Like someone who’s learned the difference between being alone and being left.
And I get that. God, I get that. It makes it hard to look away. Maybe because I know what it’s like to live behind walls you don’t remember building in the first place.
Maybe because I think she does, too.
She starts to turn towards the pen doors, like that’s it—conversation over, moment passed. But then, just before she walks off, she glances back over her shoulder.
“Thanks for not being an asshole, Sawyer. Makes my job a little easier.”
I smirk, and before I can open my mouth to respond, she’s gone.
And I stand there for a second longer than I should, wondering what the hell just happened.
And why I kind of hope it happens again.
Chapter 5
WREN
The Wilding family doesn’t believe in volume control. Or personal space. Or sitting in chairs like normal people.
