Page 26 of Property of Prophet

I reach up and tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Still not a reason to fuck up something I want to get right.”

Lily’s eyes soften. “You want to get this right?”

“Yeah.” I smile. “Not doing a great job of pretending otherwise anymore.”

“No,” she murmurs. “You really aren’t.”

Lily stands and moves away from me, and for half a second I think I’ve pushed her too far. Then she crosses the cabin toward her bed and stops beside it, looking back at me.

“Come here.”

My body responds to those two words before my brain gets involved.

She must see it in my face because her cheeks flush red and she says, “Only to sleep.”

Slowly, I exhale. “You trying to kill me, Doc?”

That gets the laugh I was hoping for.

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.” I walk toward her, stopping close enough to touch without doing it. “Only to sleep.”

Lily searches my face, making sure I mean it, then pulls back the covers and climbs in. I wait until she settles before following.

I put an arm around her slowly, giving her plenty of time to tell me to back off. Instead, she catches my wrist and pulls my arm tighter around her until my palm is against her ribs. For a while she stays stiff against me, every muscle holding.

Then I feel the first breath leave her—a long one. Her shoulders drop, her spine eases into me, and little by little the woman who sleeps ready to fight the whole fucking world gives me her weight.

I can barely breathe.

I’ve seen Lily with a gun in her hand. I’ve watched her stitch flesh, butcher meat, walk into the freezing dark without blinking, and stare down things most people would run from. But this feels bigger than any of it.

She trusts me enough to sleep.

Her hand rests over mine as her breathing slows and I lie here with my nose in her hair, smelling woodsmoke and soap, holding something I have no fucking intention of taking for granted.

Bear lifts his head once, staring toward the window.

I feel it too.

Something is still out there beyond the trees. Watching and waiting.

But it doesn’t come any closer tonight, and with Lily warm against my chest, I decide whatever the fuck it is can wait until morning.

Chapter Nine

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Prophet

Frost has crept across the inside of the window glass overnight, fine traceries catching the early gray light when I wake, and the cabin holds the particular stillness that comes before Lily has stirred the stove back to life. I’m tracking the patterns the frost throws across the pane when she sits up beside me and reaches down to the floor for something she’s clearly had stashed there a while, judging by how she doesn’t have to feel around for it.

She sets a small bundle in my hands before I’ve worked out what’s happening. Cloth, wrapped close, tied off with a length of the same paracord she uses for everything else around here.

“What’s this?”

“Open it.”