Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CALDER
Milo Hart continued to look at me after my answer, his gaze direct and unwavering. Eye contact carried weight. It could challenge, warn, claim territory, or invite attack. Most creatures in the forest understood that. Milo Hart seemed unconcerned by it. His eyes said nothing but curiosity.
As if the presence of something like me in the clearing was a problem he intended to understand rather than survive.
I studied him again and realized he had moved closer while we spoke.
It was not by much, only a few careful steps across the grass, but the distance between us had shortened enough that I could hear his heartbeat clearly beneath the layers of cloth covering him.
Too close.
Most humans worked very hard to avoid standing so near to predators. The few who had come close had done so by accident, stumbling onto trails they should not have followed or wandering too deep into territory they did not understand.
Milo Hart did the opposite.
He came nearer, as if proximity itself belonged inside the conversation.
I was the predator. I should not have been so uneasy about this change. I heard the subtle pull of air through his lungs when he breathed and felt his body heat in the cool morning space between us.
My body reacted to Milo Hart’s nearness in a way I did not recognize. I held myself still, waiting for the feeling to pass. It did not.
The strangest part—the part I did not care to examine too closely—was that Milo Hart seemed perfectly at ease with all of it.
That was more frightening than fear itself.
He shuffled a few paces to the side as he spoke. The motion was unhurried and thoughtful. I recognized it after a moment—the same careful circling he used when framing photographs, adjusting angles until the subject fit whatever pattern he was searching for.
Only now, the subject was me.
“You’ve been watching me for days,” he stated. His voice carried the same quiet curiosity that had marked most of his questions so far.
“Yes.” There was no reason to lie.
He nodded, as if he’d already suspected as much.
The lack of alarm in his scent drew my attention. Most humans reacted very differently when they realized they had been observed unnoticed.
He glanced at the trees behind me, then back again.
“Most people would find that creepy,” he added.
“You do not.”
He shrugged, the movement easy and unbothered. “You stepped between me and a bear.”
That reminder stayed with me.
For a moment, the clearing seemed very still around us, broken only by the distant tapping of a woodpecker.
He believed I would not harm him.
Before I could decide what to do with that thought, the brush behind him erupted with sudden movement.
My head snapped toward the sound, muscles tightening. Milo startled beside me, his weight shifting back a step.
The scent reached me a fraction of a second later—sharp, grassy, and familiar.
A young white-tailed buck burst from the trees at the edge of the clearing.
Then the animal bounded across the open space, hooves tearing through damp soil.
Small antlers lifted above its head, velvet catching the morning light in flashes before it disappeared into the woods on the far side of the clearing.
Then the forest grew silent again.
Milo exhaled and let out a quiet laugh. “Well,” he muttered, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck, “that explains the noise.”
I stayed still for another moment, listening to the fading crash of hooves deeper in the trees.
There had been no threat, and by the time my body eased, Milo was watching me with open interest, the corners of his mouth still faintly lifted.
He had noticed how quickly I reacted.
Judging by the twitch of his lips and the sparkle of his eyes, he found the entire thing mildly entertaining.
Milo held my gaze for another second before returning his attention to the clearing as naturally as if the interruption had never happened.
He crouched near his open camera bag, adjusting something on the lens with practiced hands. The small clicks of metal and glass carried clearly through the air while the forest eased back into its normal rhythm around us.
For a while, neither of us spoke.
Sunlight filtered through the upper branches as the morning strengthened, brightening the edges of the clearing. A pair of chickadees fluttered between nearby limbs, their calls sharp and cheerful, and that woodpecker continued its steady hammering.
Milo lifted the camera and angled it toward a cluster of low ferns near the tree line. He adjusted his stance slightly, studying the frame through the viewfinder before pressing the shutter.
The soft mechanical snap sounded again.
Then again.
Minutes passed this way, Milo moving slowly through the clearing as he worked, sometimes crouching, sometimes sidestepping to adjust his angle. His movements were careful but unhurried, the focused patience of someone accustomed to waiting for small moments most creatures never noticed.
Without thinking about it, I moved a few paces back toward the trees, where I could watch both the clearing and the narrow animal paths threading through the brush beyond it more easily.
Milo Hart noticed.
He lowered the camera and glanced over his shoulder toward where I now stood. “You’re doing that on purpose.”
I tilted my head slightly. “Doing what?”
He gestured vaguely with the camera, indicating both me and the forest around us. “The circling thing. The staying-close-but-not-too-close thing.”
I considered the question. “You are alive because I do it.”
He studied me for a moment, the earlier humor fading into something more thoughtful. Then he nodded. “Fair.” A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth again. “Still bossy though, Cal.”
“My name is Calder.”
The correction was automatic. My name had remained unchanged for longer than most human languages had existed in their present form.
Milo Hart’s mouth curved faintly. “Yeah,” he said easily. “I know.”
I watched him for a moment. His tone carried none of the sharp edges humans usually wrapped around mockery. If anything, it sounded casual. Familiar, as if he believed the adjustment to be harmless.
Humans did this often with one another. I had heard it for centuries in distant towns and camps—names shortened into easier sounds between people who trusted each other enough to use them.
Milo Hart trusted me.
I decided not to correct him again.
Milo raised the camera again, turning slightly to photograph a patch of sunlight where it spilled across the moss near the base of an oak. The shutter clicked twice and then he straightened, lowering the camera to rest against his chest.
For a moment he simply watched the forest. Then he glanced back toward me. “Do you always guard people like this?”
“No.” The answer came easily, like many of my others.
He waited.
The silence stretched long enough that the wind through the canopy became the loudest sound in the clearing.
Then I added, “Only you, Milo Hart.”
Milo Hart.
Humans believed names were simple things, nothing but labels and sounds meant to draw attention, but names carried weight.
And today, I had spoken his aloud.
The shape of it still lingered on my tongue.