His hand stopped on the door handle.
She was decorating for Christmas. He’d told her she could, given her permission like it was some gift when really he’d just needed an excuse to run. To put distance between them before he did something stupid…
Like kiss her again.
The sound of her humming drifted through the slight opening in the window, something soft and unfamiliar. His house had been silent for years. Just him and the wind and the animals. He’d gotten used to it. Told himself he preferred it.
But now she was in there filling the silence with rustling and humming and life, and she had no idea that someone had tried to kill her this morning. His grip tightened on the door handle until the metal bit into his fingers.
If he walked in now, she’d see it on his face. The fury. The fear. Everything he was trying not to feel.
She’d ask questions.
He wasn’t ready to lie. Wasn’t good at it.
He waited, watching through the window. She turned away, reaching deeper into the box, her back to the kitchen doorway.
Now.
He slipped through the back door, weight on the balls of his feet, moving the way he’d moved through krin nests when a single sound meant death.
Through the kitchen. Past the doorway. Into the hall.
She never looked up, never heard him, her humming covering the whisper of his footsteps on stone.
The bathing room door closed behind him with a soft click and he sighed in relief. Then snorted at himself. Big, mean warrior hiding from a tiny little female. What had his life come to?
Turning toward the shower, he cranked it up to full.
His back screamed as he stripped off his ruined shirt, bandages pulling away with the fabric. The wounds tore open again, all her careful work undone and blood trickled down his spine. Good. Let them bleed.
The water ran cold before it ran hot. Stepping under the spray, he let it pound against torn skin, hands pressed flat to the tile wall, head bowed. Steam rose around him. The heat sank into his muscles, loosening knots he hadn’t realized he was carrying.
Someone had hunted her like prey. Someone had stood at his fence and watched her and waited, then tried to kill her.
His hands curled into fists.
And when he found out who there wouldn’t be enough left of them to bury.
He’d make sure of it.
Chapter 9
The box was way heavier than it looked.
Juni dragged it across the main room floor, and tried not to think about the kiss. About crying in his arms while he murmured words she didn’t understand.
In an effort to distract herself from the stinging in her palms, she’d dragged the box from beside the door and started to unpack it.
Then she’d dropped back on her ass on the floor in surprise. The box wasn’t full of the normal supplies she’d seen in Goraath’s storage cupboards.
It was filled with decorations… String lights. Little plants with silver leaves and soft red fabric. There was even a whole box of carved wooden ornaments that someone must have made by hand. She stroked a reverent finger over them… each one was different, each one was perfect.
She bit her lip. He’d bought these for her. After telling her that her Christmas was ‘false cheer’, he’d still gone and bought her Christmas supplies.
It made her want to scream. Or kiss him. Maybe both.
She untangled the lights first, working the knots free with careful fingers so she could hang them up. They were different from Earth lights… each bulb was a tiny crystal. The instructions were in Latharian but she figured it out, pressing the small button at the end of the string. Golden light bloomed, warm and alive, in the center of each crystal. They were beautiful. Utterly beautiful.
