Chapter 238: The Shower Trouble

Vivian’s POV

Do not comment. Do not you dare comment, my wolf warned sharply in the back of my mind.

Not a single word. Keep your eyes up and your thoughts clean, my beast added firmly.

"You needed some help with something?" I asked quickly, trying my absolute best to pretend that this situation wasn’t completely awkward. It very much was. Standing alone in a bedroom with a half-naked man who looked like a slightly younger version of my own mate? My sanity was hanging on by a very thin thread.

He looked genuinely frustrated and... a little embarrassed by the whole thing. "I do not really understand how to use this strange contraption. I have read about them in books before, and I have heard people talk about them, but I have never actually used one myself."

I blinked in surprise. "Used what?"

When I clearly didn’t understand what he meant, he pointed a finger over his shoulder toward the open bathroom door. "The water contraption on the wall. Where exactly is the water supposed to come out from?"

Oh.

The mental image of him trying to physically fight the bathroom plumbing entered my head, and I had to work hard to choke down a sudden laugh. I walked right past him into the bathroom and went straight over to the metal knobs.

"Okay, look right here," I said, motioning for him to watch closely. "This knob is for the hot water you just turn it like this. This one is for the cold. You mix them together until you find the temperature you like. To shut it off completely, just turn them back the other way. And if you want the water to come pouring from the top nozzle instead of the tub faucet, you just press this little button right here. See?"

I turned the handles so the water poured smoothly from the overhead showerhead. Thick steam curled up into the air as pleasant warmth quickly filled the small room. I dipped a single finger into the flowing water to test it before turning back around to face him.

Joshula was watching intently, his green eyes flicking from the streaming water to my face and then quickly away again.

"Does that make sense?" I asked.

He nodded slowly, looking sheepish. "Yes... thank you for explaining."

"No problem at all," I said, meaning every word.

He let out a long breath of relief. "I am honestly not sure what I would have done without your help. I, uh, might have actually tried yanking those metal handles straight out of the wall... I thought maybe that would force something to happen."

I glanced down at the cracked tiles around the knobs and winced slightly. That completely explained the metallic scraping sound I had heard out in the hall earlier.

Good thing Zahliver had this whole place magically reinforced, my wolf mused dryly.

"It is totally fine. Everyone struggles with new showers at first. They are never really intuitive kind of a universal nightmare," I said lightly. "Just holler if you need help with anything else, alright?"

With that, I slipped back out of the room, leaving him standing there with his now-functioning water system and hopefully a little less plumbing confusion.

"I will, thank you," Joshula said politely, his bright green eyes lingering on me until I pulled the wooden door closed behind me.

Shaking my head, I padded softly down the hallway and back into our master bedroom. Poor guy... though technically speaking, he was older than me by several centuries, wasn’t he? That single thought made my brain briefly short-circuit. Werewolf timelines were always so weird. Did we even age the same way? Did it even matter?

I slipped into our bathroom and closed the door firmly behind me. Warm steam had already clouded the glass enclosure, thick and comforting. Zahliver had clearly cranked the heat up to near-boiling. The entire room felt like a private sauna.

As I undressed and stepped right into the glass shower, I heard the sudden shift of water pressure. Zahliver turned around at the sound of me entering, his hand pressing a button on the tiled wall. Another spray of warm water rained down from the opposite side, instantly engulfing us both in its warm embrace.

"Where on earth did you disappear to?" he asked, casually adjusting the water temperature with a quick flick of his wrist.

"Your brother couldn’t figure out how to turn on his shower," I said, trying to keep my voice light even though my gaze had completely derailed my train of thought.

He stood there, fully relaxed under the cascading water, the droplets tracing the hard lines of his body like they were drawn to him. His jet-black hair clung wetly to his face, looking even darker now, making his sharp features stand out in a way that made my heart skip a beat. Again.

Zahliver quirked a brow. "Oh..." He paused for a second, then narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "Was he decent?"

I rolled my eyes at him. "Oh, shut up."

He tilted his head playfully. "Wait does that mean he wasn’t wearing "

"Shh!" I reached up quickly and pressed both palms gently to his cheeks to quiet him, not that I actually minded his little flash of possessiveness. Well, maybe just a little bit. But it was also undeniably cute. And very distracting.

Especially when I looked up and got caught staring right into his face again.

Something about his eyes... it tugged at me, pulling my focus like gravity.

His strong arms wrapped around my waist automatically, just like they always did. The moment our skin touched, deep heat bloomed in my chest, curling down along my spine and seeping straight into my bones.

"What is it?" he asked, a small, genuine smile playing softly on his lips as I unconsciously brushed damp strands of dark hair away from his forehead.

"Your eyes... they look lighter than they did before," I murmured, completely unable to stop staring at him. "Like... way lighter."

He chuckled low in his throat, clearly not thinking it was a big deal at all. "Oh really?"

He might have brushed it off easily, but I couldn’t ignore it.

Before, his eyes had been a stormy, deep blue-gray, looking very much like heavy thunderclouds rolling across the sky. Now they shimmered like pure ice touched by bright sunlight. They were a pale blue, but layered intricately with flecks and threads of bright white and silver, much like frozen lake water catching the winter sky. It made them entirely impossible to look away from.

I gently traced my fingertip just beneath one of his eyes. He caught my hand in his, kissed each of my fingers one by one, and then turned my palm upward to press a lingering kiss right there, too. His striking eyes stayed locked onto mine the entire time he did it, making me feel like I was the only thing anchoring him to reality in this moment.

Then he placed my hand softly against his warm cheek and held it there.

The quiet tenderness of the gesture hit me like a wave. There was no hunger in it, no sudden lust just a quiet, fierce love that filled the hidden cracks in my heart I didn’t even realize were still healing.

And just like that, all the heavy emotions I’d tucked away earlier surged back up to the surface warm, overwhelming, and entirely real.