"You're such a charmer. Can't imagine why."
He ignores that.
"No one goes outside but me, and only after dark. Curtains stay closed. Small lamps only." He pauses. "You do what I say, when I say it. No questions. No hesitation. If I tell you to hide, you hide. If I tell you to run, you don't look back."
"And if something happens to you?"
"Nothing's going to happen to me."
"That's not an answer."
His jaw tightens. "If this goes south, you do what you did before. But you don't stop running when you get away. You keep going north until you reach an old log cabin. The man who lives there is named Gus. Old. Scary as hell. You tell him to contact Crow."
"Scarier than you?"
He gives me a look. "Old war vet who thinks the only greeting strangers deserve is the barrel of a sawed-off Remington. But you use the club's name, and he'll take you in."
"Great." I stab a noodle. "From the frying pan into the fire."
"Human, you made that leap when you went to the police."
Human.The word lands strange—not my name, just a category. He says it like a reminder. To himself or to me, I'm not sure.
"You think I was wrong to report what I heard?"
He pushes off the counter. Takes my bowl—I hadn't realized I'd finished—and sets it in the sink. His back is to me when he answers.
"Stupid. But not wrong."
He rinses the bowl and sets it in the rack. I watch his hands move—careful now, quiet—and try to reconcile the orc whothreatened to destroy my laptop with the one who changed my sheets. The one who went predator at a sound in the brush.
"Nova mentioned the sheriff," I say. "Ash. He's an orc too?"
"There are a handful of us in the Ridge. Ash, Vargan, Crow, me. A prospect named Knox." He glances over his shoulder. "That a problem?"
"No." I think about it. "Not what I expected."
"What did you expect?"
"I don't know. More hiding. Less... community."
"We're done hiding." He says it simply, but there's weight underneath. History. "This is our home."
I stand. My legs are steadier now, the tremors mostly gone. Food helped. I cross to the sink, reach for the dish towel hanging by the stove—
"Leave it." He's beside me before I register him moving. His hand closes over mine on the towel.
I've never seen anything like it up close. His fingers are twice the size of a man's, each knuckle as thick as a walnut. My entire hand disappears under his.
"I'll do it. Get some sleep."
His fingers are warm. Rough with calluses. And where they brush mine, something jolts through me—sharp and sudden, not quite electric but close. I feel it in my palm, my wrist, somewhere deeper.
His hand tightens. Just once. Just for a second.
Then he lets go like I burned him.
We both felt that. Whateverthatwas.
