It was the weakest of defenses, a child's plea. I saw it land in his eyes. The stern, protective anger didn't fade, but it was joined by a flicker of something else, pained understanding. He saw my confusion, my internal war, and it disarmed his blunt force approach.
He let out a long, slow breath that seemed to deflate his broad shoulders. The fierce patriarch receded, replaced by the weary father.
"Complicated," he echoed, the word a soft growl of resignation. He gently pried my fingers from his sleeve and instead took my hand in both of his, his palms warm and rough. "Bella, look at me. The world out there, the world of alphas and claims and bloodlines… it is *built* on complication. It is a forest of tangled roots. And you," he said, his thumb stroking my knuckles, "are my little rabbit who likes the open meadow."
He guided me to sit on the sofa, sinking down beside me. The fight had left his voice, replaced by a deep, resonant concern.
"Talk to me. Not as your alpha, but as your father. What is… complicated? Is it him? Or is it what you feel?"
He waited, his presence a solid, patient anchor in the storm of my own emotions. He was no longer demanding as a bear. He was asking as a parent. And that was infinitely harder to lie to.
The words burst out of me, sharper than I intended, a desperate weapon flung from my own confusion. "It's no different from you and Mom! You're a bear, and she's a human. I mean… you *are* a predator."
The moment the words left my mouth, the air in the room changed. It didn't grow hot with anger; it grew still, cold, and profoundly quiet. My father's hand still held mine, but it went very, very still.
He looked at me, and I saw a flicker of something deep and pained cross his face.
"You are right," he said, his voice low and thick. "I am a predator. And your mother is human." He let out a long, slow breath, as if steadying himself. "And that difference, Bella, is not a romantic complication. It is a daily, conscious choice. Hers, and mine."
He stood up and walked to the archway that led to the kitchen, where the soft sound of my mother humming as she put away dishes drifted in. He looked toward the sound, his expression softening with a love that was also, I suddenly saw, etched with permanent, careful awareness.
"I love her more than my own breath. And I have been terrified for her every single day since I first knew I loved her," he said, his voice dropping to a murmur meant only for me. "Terrified of a lost temper, a startled reflex, a single moment of my own instinct I could not control. I have filed my claws to blunted nubs for decades. I have learned to breathe so softly I do not rumble the china. I swallow my own nature every day, for her. *For her safety.*"
He turned back to me, his eyes grave. "And she, my brave, beautiful human, lives with a love that must constantly make peace with a fundamental, physical fear. She has never once made me feel like a monster. But I can see it, Bella. In the way she sometimes still flinches at a sudden noise, in the way she carefully positions herself in a room. We have built a beautiful life on a foundation of my perpetual, exhausting restraint."
He came back and knelt before me, his huge hands framing my face. "What you carry from that panther is not restraint, little rabbit. It is *claim*. It is desire in its pure, feral form. He is not filing his claws for you. He is showing them to you, and you are staring right back."
His thumb brushed away a tear I hadn't realized I'd shed. "I do not fear him because he is a predator. I fear him because he is not afraid *to be one*. And I fear for you, because you do not yet understand the weight of being loved by a creature whose love, in its truest form, is a force that could so easily forget its own strength."