As soon as the front door closes and Tarmo’s footsteps fade, the hush in the flat deepens. London suddenly vast, the night pressing in like velvet. I remain braced for a moment, the ache of old arguments and unwelcome love still crawling over my skin. Istanbul waits on the table, Tarmo’s scent lingering like a regret.
The hallway air is charged, pierced with that green wild scent: pine, iron, rain on stone. I barely see Asdar before I feel him—emerging from shadow between coats and radiator, broad and breathless and more wild than he’s ever been outside the mountains.
He waits, but I don’t. I cross the space in a rush, sobbing out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. His arms find me, lifting, crushing me against chest and jaw and callused hands, his heartbeat almost savage beneath his shirt.
There are no words. Only mouths and hands—my fingers weaving into his hair, his tongue tangled with mine, a kiss so urgent it hurts. His grip is fierce, desperate, tender; he reads my need as if it’s written in his own bones.
He sweeps me up, carries me past the kitchen—past the envelope for Istanbul, past echoes of politics and old pain—into my bedroom where city lights stripe the walls and the only rules are the ones we make in the dark.
He lays me down slowly, reverently, but trembling at the edges. I tear at his shirt, flatten my palms to his chest as his mouth finds the hollow of my throat, my collarbone, the old scars he kisses like scripture.
We undress in gasps and grasping, my laughter torn to shreds by the shock of his hands, his hunger. He worships every part of me—fingers in my hair, lips on my breasts, tongue tracing along my ribs and lower, my name whispered and bitten and sung as if it might save us both.
I pull him above me, legs circling his hips. When I look up, I see myself reflected in his golden eyes: wild, alive, claimed and claiming. There is nothing gentle now, only need—raw, ritual, written in how we move together, the city outside falling away until there’s nothing but sweat and his voice in my ear.
He enters me slowly, firmly, his hand laced with mine, anchoring me to the present. I arch against him, hungry. My nerves are fire, my heart a drum—every thrust, every gasp a boundary broken and mended, an old wound healed with his worship. The world narrows to the heat between us, both of us meeting, matching, undoing.
When I come apart, it’s with a sob—not sad but full, a body remembering nothing but joy, how rare it is to be seen and devoured not as legend but as woman, as self. He follows, trembling, shuddering, holding me too tightly, as if the miles between here and the mountains could be bridged by a single night.
After, we collapse together, slick and stunned, his face pressed to my neck, my arms wrapped hard around his ribs. The room fills with our breath, with the ache of meeting, parting, surviving. For a little while, we say nothing. What is there to say? We found each other in the wreckage again.
I stroke his hair, heart slow at last, a small laugh tremoring in my chest.
He mumbles against my skin, “I do not know where you must go, but wherever it is, the wolf will follow, and as the man you own.”
His breathing deepens, slows. Sleep takes him—but not me. I lie boneless, sated, half-swaddled in tangled sheets and the warm, possessive weight of Asdar’s arm across my belly. His breath is slow with sleep but never quite unguarded—wolf-alert, even in peace.
Outside, a taxi idles and pulls away. Somewhere a fox screams as only city foxes dare: wildness here too, even boxed in by brick and bus routes.
I study him in soft lamplight—long lashes, pale brow, the edge of a smile caught in a dream. My heart aches sweetly. My body hums with the knowledge of him. Yet even in this satisfaction, my mind is hungry: unquiet, ceaseless, already prowling through the facts of what tomorrow demands.
I should let myself drift—just savour him, young, hungry, ridiculous in his certainty. But habit wins. Already, I’m making lists:
Brief Mrs H first thing: explaining her Istanbul isn’t just another “exploring site.” for CYcrds.
Ask for the latest on Sandi. Specify: context, allies, threats.
Text the deputy chief at DEIK Burçu Şaşmaz. She’ll want to meet. I know the right questions, and she’ll tell me only some of the truth.
Pack. Not for ceremony, but for legwork: sensible shoes, a scarf or two, nothing I’d mind losing.
Asdar murmurs, turning toward me in sleep. I rest my palm on his inked body, tracing the ancient lines, the stories of his people, each more meaningful, beneath my hand than any passport or credential. I wonder, not for the first time, how this happened. How I, fifty, patched together by loss and survived affection, became his compass. Not for sex—though gods, that too—but for something more profound: the way he looks at me, as if I am the axis by which myth orbits the world.
Why me? I ask the ceiling. I could blame fate. Or pheromones. Or those nights when I was sharp, not pretty; when I let him know every flaw and he only pressed closer; when, instead of worshipping from afar, he handed me his fear and wanted to be known as much as held.
Maybe it’s that. Perhaps that’s the secret: I let him love me not as a legend, but precisely as I am. And I let myself accept it—a little, anyway.
I’m tempted to laugh, or weep, or wake him with a wicked suggestion, but I only sigh, squeeze his hand, and whisper into the soft dark, “How did you happen, wolf-boy?”
His lashes flutter. Arms tighten just enough to say he hears, even in sleep.
The heaviness of Istanbul rises in my chest: a promise and a warning both. I want to stay here, in this impossible peace, circled by arms younger and more true than any history could have promised. I want to go—purpose tugging me onward, the shape of Sandi’s trouble already forming a script in my mind.
I will. I always do. Survival’s rhythm. I’ll kiss him awake or leave a note, and London will become memory, myth layered atop myth, the scent of him pressed into my skin for days to come.
For now, for tonight, I let myself belong: not to country or duty, but to the hush after fire, the impossibility of being both wild and cherished, undone and still unfinished—always a little divided, always burning for whatever comes next.
He stirs. Eyes open—golden, immediate. His mouth finds mine again, hungry and sure. He slides inside me, and I arch to meet him.
London at my feet, the wolf inside me, and the rest of the world shut out—at least until morning.
I.Ph.
End of Book IV
The C.O.M.C. Files 