Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
MILO
I’d expected a cave, but what I found felt like something else entirely.
The air changed first, much cooler beneath the stone overhang and touched with the scent of damp earth, old rock, and something that was unmistakably Calder–wild, but clean, like the deeper parts of the forest after rain.
No rot or blood; nothing barbaric.
Just stone, shadow, and the unmistakable presence of the creature who lived here.
I paused inside the entrance and let my eyes adjust to the dimmer light.
The cave extended farther than I’d expected, widening into a natural chamber shaped more by time than design, though intricacies existed if you looked closely enough.
Sunlight only reached so far, washing the nearest walls in muted gray while softer shadows gathered deeper inside.
The stone beneath my boots was uneven, but worn smoother in certain places from repeated use–by him.
That thought stayed with me as I continued inside.
Claw marks scored part of the wall near the entrance, but they weren’t fresh gouges left by anger or instinct. Time had softened their edges. The stone looked dulled in places where the same broad hand—or paw, I’d have to ask him which he preferred—had brushed there over and over again.
A few bones rested neatly near one side of the cave, cleaned pale with age and arranged carefully enough that they didn’t feel gruesome.
Nothing here had been tossed aside carelessly.
Flat stones were positioned deliberately near the walls, almost like tables. Toward the back, the ground dipped into a worn space layered with old fur, dried moss, pine needles, and softer things gathered over time.
A place to sleep.
The place Calder slept.
Until now, some stubborn part of my brain had still been trying to file him under impossible things, things like legend, cryptid–The Beast of Bray Road.
Perhaps something too strange to fully absorb all at once.
But standing inside the place where he rested, where the shape of his life had been worn into the stone around him—no. This wasn’t a beast’s den—it was a home.
A faint drip of water echoed somewhere farther inside the cave.
I reached out and brushed my fingers against the wall beside me, finding cool, uneven stone beneath my hand—something real.
Calder didn’t just survive here. He lived here, and somehow that hit harder than anything I’d seen since meeting him.
I lowered my hand and rotated to face Calder.
He remained near the entrance, broad shoulders nearly filling the shadow beneath the overhang.
He hadn’t followed me farther inside. He stood apart from the rest of the cave with a stillness that felt different from the alert tension he carried in the woods.
He was watching me.
Carefully, and not casually, either. He studied my face with the same focus he gave tracks in the dirt or distant sounds through the trees.
And for the first time since meeting him, it occurred to me that Calder might actually care what I thought of this place.
The thought caught me off guard.
This cave wasn’t just somewhere he slept. It wasn’t a temporary shelter or a place to hide from the weather. It was private in the deepest possible sense, and he had brought me here.
I took another careful step toward him. “It feels like you,” I murmured.
His ears flicked once.
“Not just somewhere you stay,” I added. “Somewhere that matters to you.”
For a moment, he said nothing.
Then some of the hardness eased from his posture so slightly I might have missed it if I hadn’t already been watching him.
Good.
Because suddenly the idea of saying the wrong thing here felt unbearable.
My hand drifted absently to the camera strap across my chest. The familiar weight had faded into the background sometime during the walk here, which almost never happened when I was outside with it.
Usually, if I saw something beautiful or unusual, my brain reached for the camera before I could stop it.
That impulse hadn’t appeared once since Calder told me to follow him.
His gaze flickered to the camera. “You have not used it.”
I glanced down at it before looking around the cave again. “No.”
He simply waited. Observing.
“Some things…” I hesitated briefly. “Some things I don’t want to observe through a lens.”
Calder went very still.
I rubbed my thumb along the edge of the strap. “I want to remember this the right way.”
Silence stretched between us again, but it was far from awkward.
After a moment, Calder said, “Most humans do not do that.”
Something about the vulnerability in his voice made it difficult to look away.
I leaned one shoulder against the wall and gave him a small smile. “Most humans are missing out.”
That earned the faintest reaction. Not quite a smile, but close enough that I caught it before he hid it again.
And for some reason that felt earned in a way I couldn’t fully explain.
I nodded toward one of the flatter stones near the wall. “Can I sit?”
“Yes.”
I lowered myself onto the surface, gently resting the camera on my thigh. Calder remained standing for another second like he wasn’t entirely certain what to do with a guest in his home before leaning one shoulder against the opposite wall.
The whole thing should’ve felt surreal.
Instead, it felt strangely easy.
I met his gaze. “You know this is probably the first time in my life I’ve carried my camera without wanting to use it every five minutes.”
His ears twitched slightly. “You usually want to?”
“Occupational hazard.” I smiled. “Especially when people are paying ridiculous amounts of money to be photographed.”
Calder considered that. “Humans pay to be looked at.”
I laughed softly. “When you phrase it like that, it sounds deeply embarrassing.”
“It is.”
That got me laughing harder, and the corner of Calder’s mouth shifted just enough for me to catch it.
“Okay,” I said, pointing lightly toward him, “that almost counted.”
His arms folded across his chest. “Counted as what?”
“A sense of humor.”
“I was being accurate.”
“You can do both.”
That earned me a long look that probably should’ve been intimidating by now, but I found myself easing against the stone.
“I once did a luxury campaign for a watch company,” I told him. “Very expensive. Very serious. Everybody on set acted like they were curing disease instead of arranging wrist angles.”
“Wrist angles?”
“Oh, yeah. Apparently there’s a correct way to look rich while checking the time.”
One of his brows lifted slightly.
“The shoot was at this ridiculous estate outside Chicago. Huge lawn, private dock. Sports car parked outside strictly for decoration. Everybody took themselves incredibly seriously.” I shook my head. “Then this goose wandered into the middle of the shot like it owned the place.”
Calder was silent for half a beat. “A goose.”
“The meanest animal alive,” I informed him solemnly. “It started hissing at the stylist, chased one of the assistants into a hedge, and completely destroyed three hours of rich-people drama.”
For a second Calder simply looked at me, then that sound came again–low, rough, and warm.
A laugh.
It rolled out of him like he hadn’t entirely meant to let it escape, deep enough that I felt it settle somewhere under my skin before my brain caught up.
I forgot to answer right away.
The shape of his mouth changed when he laughed.
So did his eyes.
For a second, he looked younger somehow. Less guarded.
I smiled before I could stop myself. “There,” I breathed. “That one definitely counted.”
His ears angled back slightly. “Geese are ill-tempered.”
I stared at him. “You’re agreeing with me?”
“I have observed them.”
That made me laugh all over again. “Of course you have.”
Another faint twitch of his lips, and for one ridiculous second, I wanted to hear that sound again just to see what it would do to me this time.
“You should do that more often.”
“Do what?”
“Laugh.”
Calder considered me seriously. “It is not usually required.”
“Maybe not, but it sounds good on you.”
The words slipped out before I could stop them.
Silence followed.
It wasn’t awkward, but charged enough that I suddenly became very aware of the cave again. The dim light near the entrance, the cool stone behind me, and the fact that I was apparently flirting with a seven-foot cryptid inside his home.
I cleared my throat before my brain could make things worse.
“You said most humans don’t do things the way I do. What do they do?”
Calder’s expression settled again, though not completely. “They enter the forest loudly.”
“That tracks.”
“They look at screens more than trees.”
I winced. “Also tracks.”
“They take what they want and leave what they do not.”
Something older moved beneath the words, more akin to weariness rather than anger. The kind that had been there a very long time.
“What about the others?” I asked. “The ones who aren’t like that?”
Calder glanced briefly toward the cave entrance where daylight stretched across the stone floor. “There are some.”
“Not many?”
“No.”
I let that sit for a second. “And me?”
His gaze returned to mine. “You listen.”
Just that.
Two words, but something about the way he said them made it hard to breathe for a second.
I glanced down at my lap, heat rushing to my face.
“That might be the nicest thing anyone’s said to me in a while.”
Calder frowned slightly. “Humans do not say nice things to you?”
“Oh, they say things.” I snorted softly. “Usually about lighting, or angles, or whether I can make them look ten pounds thinner without making it obvious.”
“That seems dishonest.”
“It is.”
“Then why do it?”
I looked back up at him. “Because rich people pay extremely well for dishonesty.”
This time I was ready for the laugh, which somehow made it worse… or better—possibly both.
The sound set my heart to racing and spread warmth through my veins while I sat there staring at him longer than was probably normal.
Calder noticed.
Of course he noticed.
The laughter faded slowly, but something softer remained in his expression afterward.
I should’ve said something normal.
Instead, I heard myself ask, “Have you always lived here?”
“A long time.”
“How long is a long time?”
Calder looked around the cave, then back at me. “Long enough to remember when there were fewer roads.”
That gave me pause.
Outside, a bird called faintly somewhere beyond the trees.
Inside, the silence deepened around us.
“Fewer roads,” I repeated.
“Fewer humans,” Calder continued. “Fewer machines.”
There was no performance in the words.
No attempt to sound mysterious.
Just fact, and that made them land harder.
I looked at him for another moment before pushing up from the stone.
The camera shifted against my thigh, and I caught it before the strap tangled. “So when you say a long time,” I said, glancing back toward him, “you mean a really long time.”
“Yes.”
I huffed out a laugh. “You’re not exactly big on overexplaining, are you?”
“No.”
The corner of my mouth twitched.
I turned a little too quickly and caught the edge of uneven stone beneath my boot, stumbling to find my balance but before I could correct myself, Calder was there.
His hand closed around my waist, and my breath hitched in my throat.
One of my hands instinctively found his side, fingers sinking into thick fur as I steadied myself. The movement pulled me close enough that my chest brushed his, close enough that the rest of the cave seemed to disappear for one dizzy second.
Neither of us moved.
Calder’s hand remained firm against my hip, broad enough that I could feel the span of it even through my shirt.
He was warm, far warmer than the cool cave air should’ve allowed.
His chest was solid beneath my hand, rigid muscle beneath fur and unshakably real.
His breathing remained slower than mine.
Calmer.
That somehow made everything worse.
My gaze flitted to his mouth before I could stop it.
I recognized my immediate mistake, because it was impossible not to wonder now that I’d had the thought.
What would happen if I closed the distance between us?
The thought slammed into me enough to leave me breathless.
Then I glanced up, finding Calder’s deep, dark eyes already on me.
That made it worse too.
The cave seemed to shrink around us. Water dripped faintly somewhere deeper inside. Pale light streamed into the entrance. The sound of my pulse kicked too fast beneath my skin.
Neither of us stepped back.
When Calder finally spoke, his voice was low enough that I felt it more than heard it. “You should watch your footing.”
Nothing about the words should’ve sent a wave of heat through me the way they did.
“Yeah,” I managed. “Probably.”
Still, neither of us moved immediately.
His hand remained at my waist another second too long, and mine stayed against his side.
The space between us felt fragile somehow, stretched thin enough that one wrong movement might break whatever this was becoming.
Slowly, I stepped back. just enough to put a little space between us.
Not enough to forget the feeling of his hand against me.
I looked away first, because if I kept staring at him like that, I was going to start thinking things I definitely wasn’t prepared to deal with.
My gaze drifted toward the back of the cave again, to the worn sleeping place, the arranged bones and the softened marks in the stone.
Everything about the space reflected Calder–careful, private, and alone.
And suddenly that loneliness felt tangible.
This wasn’t curiosity anymore. That realization should’ve unsettled me more than it did.
A week ago, the idea of being drawn to a creature out of local legend would’ve sounded impossible. Now it simply felt true, and maybe that should’ve terrified me.
It didn’t.
Slowly, I looked back toward him.
Calder still hadn’t moved much. He watched me with that same patient focus, though something in it felt less guarded now.
Like he felt the shift between us too.
I let out a slow breath. “I’m glad you brought me here.”
Calder said nothing.
He simply stood there in the dim cave light, broad and silent and impossible, watching me like the words had landed somewhere he didn’t fully understand yet.
And standing there in the quiet of Calder’s world, I realized I didn’t want to be anywhere else.