“All accurate.”
“You don’t get to agree with me and make it sound noble just because you’re standing in my tree line begging to stay.” My voice roughened. “I don’t know what to do with that because the last time I trusted you to stay, you ruined me.”
The forest went quiet. The gutted silence of a wound reopened.
“I understand,” he said.
“So go back to wherever you’re staying. Wait two days.”
“Mira...”
“Go.”
Silence stretched. Then a shift in the underbrush, barely perceptible.
I stayed crouched at the runoff. Let the water run over my hands. Cold, grounding, pulling me back from the edge of breaking.
When I stood and turned back toward the blind, I caught it. A flash of movement at the southern tree line, retreating. He’d let me see him go.
His back. The rigid set of his shoulders, the controlled stride, the way his head didn’t turn. But for half a second before the trees swallowed him, I caught his profile.
Jaw clenched. Eyes holding the expression of a man absorbing a blow he’d earned, carrying it in his chest.
My chest caved.
I looked away. Walked back to the blind with hands that were steady because his proximity had fixed what his absence had broken.
Wyatt returned from the northern stake, settling beside me.
“Anything on the eastern corridor?”
The tree line was empty. Solomon was gone.
“Clear.” I adjusted the scope. “Nothing to report.”
Wyatt accepted it.
When the session ended and Wyatt packed the gear, I stood at the tree line for one extra minute, looking south. The forest was still, ordinary, empty of the presence that had been breathing thirty meters away all morning.
My hand pressed against my stomach. The babies were quiet.
“Two days,” I said to no one. To the man who could probably still hear me if he’d paused at the outer perimeter the way I suspected he had.
Then I walked back inside and closed the gate behind me.
48
— • —
Percival
Solomon came back smelling of her.
Sunset was reflecting through the canopy when I caught the scent from fifty yards out. My wolf registered it before my brain did: Solomon’s scent. And Mira’s. Woven together in an intensity that only came from sustained, full-body contact.
Oh well, I guess Solomon had not simply checked on our mate. He had checked on our matethoroughly.
He emerged from the tree line at the western edge of Farmon’s camp, tactical vest unzipped, hair out of its usual discipline. A scratch ran down the side of his neck that wasn’t a combat wound. Combat wounds didn’t come in sets of four, evenly spaced, consistent with fingernails dragging across skin.
