Page 30 of Wild Thorns

"Jasper—"

"I won't tell them anything you don't want me to. But they need to know there's a threat. They need to know to watch for strangers asking questions, for anyone who doesn't belong." His expression was serious. "This is what family does, Serena. We protect each other."

He left before I could argue, striding toward the main house with a purpose that made him look larger, more dangerous, less human than he ever had before.

I watched him go. Watched the way he moved, that fluid grace that I kept noticing in all of them, that coordination that looked more animal than human. Watched the way his shoulders seemed broader than usual, the way the sunlight caught his hair and turned it almost bronze.

You're ours.

I should have been scared. I should have been running.

Instead, I sat on my porch in the morning light, watching Jasper disappear into the main house, and I felt something I hadn't felt in a very long time.

Safe.

But safety, I was learning, had a price. And as I gathered my coffee cup to go inside, I noticed something that made that newfound peace fracture, just a little.

On the step below where I'd been sitting, scratched into the wood with something sharp, were two words:

FOUND YOU

The letters were fresh. The wood beneath them was raw and pale.

Someone had been here. When? While I slept? While I drank my coffee?

Someone had been close enough to reach me; to send me a message.

And I hadn't heard a thing.

Chapter nine

Three Different Norths

Week four.

I was aware that I was looking for all three of them whenever I walked into a room. This was not something I planned to do. My eyes would sweep automatically, seeking Callum's broad shoulders in the corner, Jasper's easy grin, Eli's watchful presence behind those wire-rimmed glasses. I filed it under: I'm lonely. They're my primary social contact in a new place. It's normal.

It didn't feel normal.

It felt like something was pulling at me. A thread I couldn't see, tightening every time I was near any of them. A compass needle swinging toward magnetic north, except in this case, north was three different directions at once.

The feeling was worst, or best, I couldn't decide, when I was near all three of them at once.

Sunday dinners at the main house had become a weekly thing, and I'd started looking forward to them with an intensity that bordered on embarrassing. Not for Rowena's cooking, though that was exceptional, jambalaya, crawfish étouffée and red beans and rice that tasted like they'd been made with a century of handed-down recipes. Not for the comfortable chaos of the Voss family table, the overlapping conversations, the easy laughter and the way they made space for me like I'd always been there.

But for that moment when I walked into the dining room and felt the weight of three different gazes turning toward me.

It should have been overwhelming. Three men, three sets of eyes, three distinct energies focusing on me at once. Instead, it felt like coming home.

I didn't know what to do with that.

The Sunday before, Rowena had caught me in the kitchen, helping with the dishes while the brothers argued about something in the other room. Their voices carried through the doorway, Jasper's laugh, Callum's low rumble of disagreement, Eli's measured counterpoint.

"You fit here," Rowena said, her hands steady in the soapy water. "I noticed it the first day."

"I appreciate you saying that." I dried a plate, carefully, the way my grandmother had taught me. "Everyone's been so welcoming."

"Not what I mean." She handed me another plate, her eyes meeting mine briefly. They were amber, like Jasper's, with gold flecks that caught the kitchen light. "I mean you fit. Like a piece that was missing."