Chapter 47
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
MILO
The sound startled me.
Not because it was loud, but because I’d stopped expecting it.
Over the last few weeks, I’d gotten so used to the sounds of the forest—the wind through branches, distant movement in the trees, Calder’s footsteps somewhere nearby—that my phone ringing inside the cabin felt strangely out of place now.
The irritating buzz cut through the room again from the small table near the window where I’d left it earlier.
My screen lit up softly.
Calder’s gaze shifted toward it before returning to me.
I was already smiling before I picked it up. “Yeah,” I murmured, pushing away from the wall. “That’s probably her.” I answered on the second ring. “Hola, Mrs. Alvarez.”
“?Milo Hart!” she exclaimed immediately. “Ay, Dios mío, mijo.” Oh my goodness, my boy. “You’re still alive.”
I laughed before I could stop myself, leaning one shoulder against the wall. “Nice to hear your voice too.”
“Don’t get smart with me,” she scolded, though I could already hear the smile in her voice. “I was beginning to think those woods swallowed you whole.”
My eyes flicked toward Calder automatically. He hadn’t moved any closer, but his attention stayed fixed on me now, listening even if he couldn’t understand the conversation itself.
“I told you I’d call,” I said. “You’re the one who acts like I go completely off-grid every time I need time to think.”
“Mmhmm.” She made a soft disapproving sound. “Porque sí desapareces, carino.” Because you do disappear, darling. “Since you were fifteen years old, every time something sits too heavily in that head of yours, poof!” She clicked her tongue. “Gone.”
“That is wildly dramatic.”
“And accurate.”
I laughed quietly, rubbing a hand over my jaw.
“You do many things,” she continued. “Returning phone calls on time has never been one of them.”
“That’s just slander.”
“It is the truth,” she shot back instantly. “And don’t try charming your way around it! I raised you better than that.”
Warmth spread through me so suddenly it caught me off guard.
God, I hadn’t realized how badly I needed to hear her voice.
“I’m okay,” I murmured. “Really. I’ve just been out here thinking.”
“Ay, mijo.” Oh, my son. Her voice softened immediately. “I know.”
Simple as that.
No pushing, no demand for an explanation.
Just understanding in the way she always had.
My fingers tapped lightly against the edge of the table while I stared down at the floorboards.
She knew me a little too well sometimes.
“How’s Elias?” she asked.
That pulled a smile back out of me. “He’s good.”
“That boy thinks too much.”
“Funny,” I muttered. “Sounds familiar.”
She ignored that completely. “Did he tell you what’s bothering him yet?”
“No,” I admitted. “But I think he wanted to.”
“Mmm. Elias has always needed time before he opens a door all the way.”
I huffed a quiet laugh.
Again–way too perceptive.
Silence fell between us, easy instead of awkward–familiar, like sitting in the kitchen late at night while she cooked and pretended not to notice me hovering around for comfort that I was too proud to ask for out loud.
Then she sighed softly. “You’re leaving soon.”
The words redirected my attention toward Calder again.
He stood near the opposite side of the room watching me carefully, something quieter settling into his expression as he listened to my side of the conversation.
“Yeah,” I hushed. “Soon.”
“Well, I don’t like that.”
The bluntness of it made me smile immediately.
“You come all the way out here, stay almost in my backyard, and somehow I barely see you properly? No, senor. No, sir. I reject this arrangement.”
I laughed outright this time. “I saw you when I got here!”
“For one afternoon,” she corrected. “One afternoon, a cup of coffee and arroz con pollo and suddenly you think that counts as a proper visit?”
“You fed me an entire meal.”
“And somehow that was enough for you?” she shot back.
I laughed under my breath. “When you put it like that, I sound ungrateful.”
“You are a little ungrateful,” she informed me warmly.
I grinned despite myself. “I’m surviving out here, you know.”
“Mmhmm.” She was deeply unconvinced. “That is not the same thing as taking care of yourself.”
The words carried the same familiar warmth they always had, the same quiet insistence that somebody should be looking after me whether I asked for it or not.
“I just want to see you again before you leave,” she said more gently now. “Sit down with you properly. Talk without you disappearing back into those woods after five minutes.”
“I didn’t disappear after five minutes.”
“Fifteen, then,” she allowed. “Still unacceptable.”
I laughed under my breath. “I’ll come by,” I promised.
“Good. I’ll make sure you still remember what vegetables are.”
“I eat vegetables.”
That earned me a knowing look from Calder.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Don’t start.”
Mrs. Alvarez heard the change in my voice at once. “Ah,” she said slowly. “So you are not alone out there.”
My entire body froze. Then I rubbed a hand over my face, already laughing under my breath. “You hear everything, huh?”
“Mijo, I raised two boys. Of course I hear everything.”
Calder’s head tilted slightly, recognizing his name even if he couldn’t follow the rest.
“I’m serious,” she continued, gentler now. “You’re here, and then you’ll be gone again. I don’t want to miss my chance to see you.”
That hit somewhere deeper than I wanted it to, the crushing reminder that people could love you enough to miss you before you’d even left.
“I’ll come by,” I murmured. “I promise.”
“Good,” she said immediately, satisfied. “Because otherwise I was going to send Neven up there to drag you back down the mountain myself.”
I blinked. “Neven?”
“My nephew,” she said. “He’s staying with me for a while until he gets settled. Sweet boy. Helpful. Strong enough to drag stubborn men out of forests.”
I snorted. “I drove here myself, you know.”
“And then vanished into the wilderness like a suspicious little cryptid,” she replied.
That startled a laugh out of me loud enough that Calder’s attention sharpened immediately.
“You don’t need to send a rescue team. I’ll come see you.”
“You better,” she warned. “And don’t take forever, carino--sweetheart.”
“I won’t.”
“You say that now.”
The call ended the same way conversations with her always did: warmth wrapped inside mock complaints, affection disguised as scolding right up until the last second.
I lowered the phone slowly, still smiling a little, then pushed away from the wall and crossed back toward Calder.
“That was Mrs. Alvarez,” I explained.
“The one who raised you,” he said.
“Yeah. Me and Elias. She’s… family.” My mouth softened a little around the words. “The kind you don’t outgrow just because you get older.”
Calder watched me quietly. The look in his eyes always felt too perceptive, like he listened to the meaning underneath words just as carefully as the words themselves.
“She wants to see me before I go back to Chicago,” I continued.
“You will go.”
“Yeah, I was already planning to.” Then I hesitated for a second before adding, “I want you to come with me.”
That caught him off guard.
I saw a brief flicker of panic in his eyes. “She already knows about me?” he asked.
The question came carefully, like he was trying to understand exactly what I meant before he stepped wrong inside it.
“Not exactly,” I said. “She believes in beings like you—always has. Her mother did too. Probably her grandmother before that.” A small smile tugged at my mouth. “I grew up hearing stories about the Beast of Bray Road at our kitchen table.”
His expression changed, though I couldn’t quite read it. “You told her those stories were about me?”
“No.” I laughed. “I was like eight. I thought you were just a scary story designed to stop kids from wandering into the woods.”
“And now?”
“Now I know you’re a real scary story.”
That earned me the faintest look of disapproval, which honestly made me grin harder.
“She matters to me,” I said more quietly after a moment. “And… you matter to me. I don’t want to keep those parts of my life separate anymore.”
Something moved through his expression then. Subtle, but there long enough for me to catch it. Vulnerability.
Not fear of Mrs. Alvarez herself, but fear of stepping into something human and important enough to matter this much to me.
“You would bring me into your family’s home,” he said slowly.
“Yeah.”
His gaze stayed on mine another second before dropping briefly down the length of himself. “As I am.”
I followed the look automatically.
Very naked.
Very large.
Very unfair to my ability to think straight.
“Well,” I said, dragging my eyes back up to his face with effort, “preferably after you shift. And preferably with pants.”
That stopped him completely, his attention dropping to his lap before lifting back to me. “…Human clothing.”
I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to stop myself from laughing. Barely. “That’s usually how visiting people works, yeah.”
His brow pulled together slightly. “Your clothing will not fit me.”
“No,” I admitted. “You’re six-seven when you shift. There’s not exactly a secret stash of giant cryptid boyfriend clothes in my closet.”
“Cryptid boyfriend.” The way he repeated it—careful, deliberate—sent warmth straight through me.
“Yeah,” I said, unable to stop myself from smiling. “That’s you.”
His attention lingered on me for another second before he asked, with complete seriousness, “Will this upset your Mrs. Alvarez?”
God, something about the question hit me directly in the chest, underneath the literal concern was something quieter: Calder wanted to get this right.
“No. She’s going to love you.”
He searched my face carefully, like he was still trying to understand how someone like him fit into a sentence like that. “I have never done something like this before,” he admitted.
The honesty in it tugged at my heart.
Calder could face hunters, injuries, things that moved through the woods in the dark without flinching.
But this?
Meeting someone important to me?
Being invited into my life outside the forest.
That mattered to him in an entirely different way.
“I know,” I said quietly.
His gaze held mine. “You are certain this is safe for her?”
“Calder.” I reached for his hand, threading my fingers through his.
“You spent the last several weeks making sure nothing in these woods hurt me. I trust you around one sixty-year-old woman with strong opinions and unlimited access to arroz con pollo who would take down a seven-foot cryptid with her bare hands.”
“I do not know what arroz con pollo is.”
“You’re about to.”
The corner of his mouth moved slightly at that. Progress.
I squeezed his hand before starting toward the bedroom.
“Come on,” I said. “We need to figure out how to make you look slightly less like an otherworldly forest god and slightly more like somebody’s intimidating boyfriend.”
He followed behind me immediately. “I am intimidating?”
“Calder.”
I looked back at him.
Even in his shifted form he’d tower over most people, hair that was nearly white in the low light, muted green eyes fixed on me with that impossible intensity that never quite felt human no matter what shape he wore.
“Babe, be serious.”
He grew quiet after that, considering the question with complete sincerity like he genuinely needed to evaluate whether people found him frightening.
Of course he wasn’t joking. Calder had never assumed he understood how humans saw him.
Which somehow only made him more adorable.
“And if we don’t leave soon,” I added, digging through my bag for clothes he had approximately zero chance of fitting into properly, “Mrs. Alvarez is apparently sending her nephew Neven to drag me out of the woods himself.”
Calder’s attention lifted immediately. “The helpful one.”
I laughed. “Yeah. The helpful one.”
“I do not think I would enjoy someone attempting to drag you anywhere.”
There it was again, that quiet possessiveness he never seemed fully aware he was revealing.
I turned back toward him, smiling despite myself. “Relax. You’re still my first choice for wilderness protection.”
His expression softened just enough for me to catch it. “Good.”