"Anyone, Eden. Not even if they say they're police. Not even if they look official. You don't open that door until you hear my voice." He pauses. "And if you have to run, go North. Find Gus. Tell him to contact the club."
I nod. I can't speak.
He looks at me for a long moment. Then he's gone. The back door opens and closes, and I'm alone.
The kitchen floor is cold when I sit down. I pull my knees to my chest and wait.
I don't know how long it takes. Long enough for the shaking to stop. Long enough for my heartbeat to slow to something approaching normal, for the roar to fade from my ears. Long enough for a smell to register—something burning.
The tenderloin.
I scramble up. The cast iron is still on the burner, smoke rising from the pan. I grab a dish towel and yank it off the heat. The bottom of the roast is black. Not dark brown, not charred—black. The twine burned clean off on the bottom, leaving the meat splayed open.
I use tongs to flip it onto a cutting board. The top looks fine. Seared, like it's supposed to be. But underneath—
Not ruined. Just... half-ruined.
The back door opens.
I whip around, dish towel still in hand, before I register who it is. He steps inside, scanning the room—corners first, then windows, then me. His eyes find the smoking cast iron, the blackened roast on the cutting board.
"Clear," he says. "No tracks. No sign anyone came onto the property."
I nod.
He tucks the pistol into the back of his waistband. Tries to make it casual. It's not.
His hands are steady. His face is blank. But his shoulders are tight.
His phone buzzes.
He checks it, and his shoulders loosen—just slightly, just enough for me to see.
"Text was delayed," he says. "Cell tower issue. Crow got the alert twelve minutes ago. Ran the plates. Rental car out of Asheville. Probably looking for the trailhead—people miss the turn all the time."
That's twelve minutes where the system was blind, where a car appeared and neither of us knew if it was nothing or everything.
"Okay." My voice sounds distant. "That's... good."
He looks at the cutting board. At the half-burnt tenderloin. At the disaster of a kitchen—the salt on the ceiling, the garlic scattered everywhere.
"You should eat something."
I almost laugh. "So should you."
A few hours ago, my fingertips touched his jaw. Now we're sitting three feet apart and he won't look at me.
We eat at the small kitchen table. I sliced off the burnt side and threw it away. What's left is uneven—overcooked on oneend, almost raw in the middle where the heat never reached. The garlic butter I never finished sits congealed in a pan on the stove.
He eats without complaint, cleans his plate in the time it takes me to get through half of mine, and goes back for seconds—I can't tell if he's being polite or if orc taste buds just work differently.
Food moves around my plate. I try to taste something other than adrenaline.
I wanted to give him something—a thank you he couldn't deflect.
The joy got stolen.
We eat anyway.
