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I need to do better.

By the time I’m finished, I’m hot, I’m grumpy, and I’m still thinking too much about Lynx. Dinner is tempting, considering I know that I’m going home to a place where I have nothing, but I know if I see him again, he’ll only give me more to think about, and I don’t want to be up all night.

Not for him.

So I skip his place and wait further out on the road for Wilde, and when he gets there, I follow Lynx’s advice.

“Any chance you can introduce me around?”

Wilde looks at me from under a bushy eyebrow. “To who?”

“The Pickards would be a start. Viv told me to drop in too.”

It’s like he’s trying to read the reasons from my expression, but he won’t get it out of me. I have an excellent poker face. “Guess we’ve got time.”

Thank fuck for that. Now all I have to do is use my very innocent face to get what I want, and then I won’t need Lynx to feed me.

Or protect me.

Or bring me water when I’m working.

“You should know where Booker lives too,” Wilde says. “In case you ever need a doctor.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Not that I’m going to be here long enough for that.

CHAPTER

SEVEN

LYNX

The rabbit ran away. How interesting.

Wilde’s truck leaves a cloud of dust behind, and I turn my back on it to walk into my house. Bob is asleep in his bed—which doesn’t mean he’s my pet—and the stew I’ve been working on is bubbling on the stove.

Almost done.

I cooked an extra batch this time for Sasha to take home with him, and he’d left without it. Maybe it wasn’t smart to tell him not to trust me.

While dinner cooks, I pull out the chair at my small table and throw myself into it, drumming out a heavy, constant beat on the wood with my fingertips. I don’t like my days being disrupted, and today was worse than the others this week. First, having Sasha follow me this morning, then bartering with Grace for her jam, feeding a starving runt that shouldn’t have made it past infancy, and training with my cubs constantly interrupted by thoughts of Sasha. And the unsettled feelings I had about leaving him alone while I followed through on everything I had to do.

Where he was, if he was safe, how fucking vulnerable he looked all pink-cheeked and big-eyed when I went to give him some water. These are the types of distracting thoughts that I don’t have time for and don’t want to entertain.

With any luck, he won’t be working here for much longer. The things he stole would be maybe the equivalent of a week’s work, so I shouldn’t have to deal with him for long.

But will that make things worse?

No. I scrape my chair back, earning a sleepy, unimpressed glare from Bob. If Sasha isn’t here, it means I won’t be constantly irritated at his helplessness. It will stop bugging me, and I’ll be able to focus back on my duties.

Only a few more days of this nightmare.

When dinner is cooked, I divide it up and leave. Once a week, I cook for Ziggy, the town electrician and resident mine dweller. He’s small like Sasha, but unlike Sasha, he’s never once given me the impression of being a victim. He stands up for himself in his own way, and while I’ve always had a healthy level of respect for him, that respect has been dented with the arrival of these city dwellers.

And him falling for one of them.

Worse still, him falling for a twin.