Thomas had a taste for the finer things, and it showed. The apartment complex was tucked in a quiet, pleasant neighborhood with easy access to transit, and the two-bedroom flat itself was kept immaculately — neat, ordered, and surprisingly thoughtful in its arrangement. Clara found herself revising her opinion of him upward a notch.
"You know, we could always just share a room," Thomas suggested with a grin, "and give your precious one the other all to itself."
"Naber and I will take one room," Clara said, carrying her luggage toward the bedroom without breaking stride. "And in the future, kindly knock before entering." She didn't need to spell out what she meant. Men had a way of engineering situations, and she wasn't naive enough to pretend otherwise. That said, Thomas was a far cry from the sort who let his instincts do all the thinking — she had always known that about him. It was the only reason she had agreed to this arrangement at all.
"Wonderful," Thomas muttered, flopping onto the sofa with exaggerated despair. "I've been outranked by a dog."
"You're the one who made the comparison," Clara called back, laughing. "That's already one point against you."
Now that she had a proper home base, Clara bought a small dog kennel for Naber and placed it right beside her bed, close enough that she could check on it with a single turn.
As it turned out, even the most well-intentioned man has his limits. Thomas held to the house rules for exactly two days before his patience began to slip. One evening after dinner, the two of them settled onto the sofa in front of the television, and somewhere between the easy laughter and the comfortable closeness, Thomas drew her in and kissed her—
"Whimper… whimper…"
Naber padded out from the bedroom, pressed its head against Clara's ankle, and looked up at her.
Clara pulled back immediately, her face flushed, and scooped the pup into her arms. "I need to feed Naber," she announced, retreating toward her room with as much composure as she could manage.
Thomas sank back against the sofa cushions with a long, defeated exhale. He had spent the better part of the evening carefully setting the mood, had genuinely thought tonight might be different — and had been thoroughly foiled by a dog.
In the privacy of her room, Clara mixed the milk formula and settled down to feed Naber, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth before she could stop it.
"Good timing," she whispered. "I had absolutely no idea how I was going to get out of that one."
Too close. Far, far too close.
"Whimper…" Naber didn't seem particularly hungry. It nuzzled its head against her stomach and tilted its face up to look at her.
In the warm glow of the lamp, something caught Clara's eye — Naber's gaze reflected the light back at her in twin points of luminous green.
Wolf's eyes.
Her interest sharpened immediately. She reached for her camera. "Come on then, let big sister get a few shots."
Naber stared at the lens with open curiosity, then swatted at it with one paw. The camera lurched, and Clara's heart nearly stopped as she caught it a half-second before it hit the floor.
"That is how big sister pays the bills," she told it, breathless. "If you break it, what are we going to eat?" As it was, money was already running thin. A single tin of formula ran to several hundred yuan, and Naber's appetite put any ordinary dog to shame — the first tin had been demolished in just a few days, and payday was still a long way off.
Naber fixed its gaze on the gleaming lens and lowered itself into a crouch, fur bristling, a low growl rising in its throat.
"Easy," Clara laughed, rubbing the top of its head. "It's just a camera. It's not going to hurt you."
"Grr—" Naber promptly sank its teeth into her finger and began to gnaw.
Clara laughed and let it, freeing her other hand to lift her phone and record. Naber charged and tumbled across the bed, rolling onto its back and offering up its soft belly to be scratched.
For a wolf, the belly is the most vulnerable place on the body. Yet here it lay, completely exposed, without a trace of wariness.
Trust between people was a fragile, hard-won thing. Yet Naber, after only a handful of days, offered its trust to Clara without condition or hesitation.
Later that night, somewhere in the haze between waking and sleep, Clara was pulled back to the surface by a sound — Naber scrabbling at the bars of its kennel, hauling itself upward with determined little legs, its eyes glowing green in the dark.
Too drowsy to think, Clara reached down, scooped it up, and dropped it onto the bed beside her. She was asleep again before her head settled back into the pillow.
Night, however, belongs to wolves. Naber was wide awake and growing hungrier by the minute — it had skipped its evening bottle, and now its stomach was making itself heard in earnest. Clara, for her part, was deeply, immovably unconscious.
Naber clambered over the duvet and pressed its nose against her face, licking her cheek in persistent, hopeful strokes. When she didn't stir, it changed tactics — nosing its way toward the gap in her blanket and burrowing inside.
Clara's sleep shirt was loose and roomy. Naber crawled in through the collar and worked its way downward until it encountered something — two warm, extraordinarily soft masses that stopped it in its tracks. Instinct took over. A familiar scent reached it, ancient and unmistakable, and Naber pressed its muzzle forward and began to suckle with determined enthusiasm.
"Mmh—" Clara jolted awake, gasping at the sharp sensation blooming across her chest. Something was moving inside her shirt. Still half-asleep, she let out a shriek.
She shoved her hand in and pulled out a small, wriggling, entirely unrepentant ball of fur.
Clara snapped on the bedside lamp. There was Naber, dangling from her grip, blinking up at her with wide, luminous, perfectly innocent green eyes.