"Why do you do that?"
My hand stops mid-swing. "Do what?"
"Act like everything's a joke."
The question sits between us like a live wire. Her eyes are on me now.
I should deflect. I'm good at deflecting. Knox calls it my superpower: the ability to steer any conversation toward a laugh so nobody looks too close at whatever I'm hiding behind it.
"Maybe because the alternative isn't fun for anyone."
She doesn't blink. Doesn't accept the easy answer. Keeps pinning me with a stare that strips the paint off every wall I've built, and the words spill out before I can stop them.
"I'm the spare brother, Jess. Always have been. Knox is the president, the leader, the firstborn, who—. I'm the brother who tagged along. The backup. Second in the club, second in the family, second in every room I've ever walked into." My voice stays even but the nail bends in my grip. I straighten it against the window frame. "So yeah. I make jokes. Because if I'm funny, at least I'm something."
Her expression shifts. Surprise first, cracking through the ice she's packed around herself, and then a softness she smothers sofast I almost miss it. But I don't miss it, because I'm an orc, and I can smell the shift. Defensiveness loosening, curiosity bleeding through, warmth she's trying to bury under all that anger.
I've been scenting that warmth for months. It's driving me out of my mind.
"Finn—"
My phone cuts her off. Knox's name on the screen.
"Hold that thought." I turn away, press the phone to my ear. "Yeah."
"How's the clinic?"
"Standing. Barely."
"And Jess?"
I glance over my shoulder. Jess has moved to the supply closet, pulling lanterns off the shelf, her back to me. "Alive. Hostile. The usual."
Knox's silence carries weight. "We got word from the border. Father sent packages. Could show up any day."
My grip tightens on the phone. "Here? To Nightfall Cove?"
"To the clubhouse. But if they can't get through the storm, they'll go to wherever they can find us. You're not exactly hiding, Finn."
The clinic. He means the clinic. If some courier from the Bloodstone Mountains rolls up to the front door carrying crates stamped with orc clan seals while she's standing right there —
She doesn't know. Sarah does, Knox told her, and she's kept it locked down because we asked her to. But Jess has no idea that the VP cracking jokes and hammering plywood in her clinic is a runaway prince from a bloodline that stretches back six hundredyears. She thinks I'm a mechanic with a loud bike and a bad reputation.
"She doesn't need to deal with our family shit on top of a hurricane."
"If you're serious about her, she's going to find out eventually."
"I'm serious." The words land harder than I mean them to. Jess's shoulders tense at the supply closet—she heard the tone, not the words. I lower my voice. "That's exactly why I'm not dumping orc politics on her while she's trying to save lives."
Knox goes quiet. The kind that means he's choosing between pushing and letting me hang myself.
"Don't say I didn't warn you, brother."
The line goes dead. I pocket the phone and drive the next nail through the plywood with enough force to crack the board down the center.
Jess turns at the sound, her gaze moving from the split wood to me and staying there.
"I'll get another sheet," I say, and walk out before she can ask what the call was about.
