Caroline
It's the hottest, stinky, slobbery breath for me.
Does it interrupt a dream about a different kind of tongue exploring my face? I mean, maybe. I'll never tell, but maybe.
Regardless, there's no mistaking the owner of an appendage this wet and enthusiastic. I open one eye and…
… Yep. That's a dog.
But it's clear that I'm still half-asleep when my first thought isn't Whose dog is that, but rather, Is Afon Satyrin secretly a dog shifter?
Alas, this is not that kind of story. I wish it was—there's something irrepressibly hot and feral about fated mates and alpha loners with mystical powers. But this dog is just a dog, not a prince in disguise.
He's a cute dog, though. Terrifying, but cute. A massive black-and-tan head looms less than an inch away from my nose. Brown eyes the size of walnuts stare into mine with the vacant, joyful intensity of a creature who has never had a single complex thought and is deeply at peace with that fact.
It's a Rottweiler.
A huge Rottweiler.
I open the other eye.
The Rottweiler takes this as an invitation and licks a hot, wet, sticky stripe from my chin to my hairline.
"AUGH—!"
I scramble backward on the couch as far as I can go.
That isn't very far because I'm already pressed against the armrest. The dog follows, tail whirring like a metronome set to allegro vivace, enormous paws the size of dinner plates planted on the edge of the cushion.
Its whole back end is wiggling so hard that its front half can barely stay upright and the whole couch is rocking with it.
It licks me again—my ear this time, so deep and thoroughly that I feel as though I've just lost a virginity I never even knew I possessed.
My Ear Card? Is that a thing? Has my ch-ear-ry been popped?
"Oh my God!" I yelp as the tongue bath continues. I'm getting it from all angles now, drenching every inch of exposed skin. "Oh my God, oh my God, you're enormous, what are you—"
"Wolf. Down."
Afon's voice booms from somewhere behind me. The dog—or is he a wolf? Color me confused—ceases at once. He immediately drops off the couch and trots over to Afon, tail still going absolutely berserk.
I press a hand to my hammering chest and try to regain my composure. "You have a wolf?" I ask.
Afon shakes his head. "No, that's a dog. His name is Wolf."
I pause and count to ten. That's a wise choice, because my initial instinct was to roll my eyes so hard at Afon's unsmiling snark that they'd definitely get stuck that way, just like my mom always warned me they would.
When my rage has passed, I scowl at Afon. "Where did he come from?"
Afon doesn't answer. He strides past me and into the kitchen, Wolf trotting at his heels. He opens a cabinet, pulls out a metal bowl, and fills it with kibble from a bin under the sink.
The millisecond Afon nods, Wolf starts hoovering up the food. It's gone in the blink of an eye, and the bear-sized pup looks like he could easily go for seconds, thirds, fourths, tenths, and beyond.
"Good boy," Afon praises. He actually sounds genuinely kind for a second. Then he tosses a bone the size of my femur onto the rug in front of the hearth. Wolf goes lumbering after it happily and sets to chewing.
"Are we sure I'm not dead?" I muse out loud. "Because I feel like I might be in the afterlife."
"If you were, I wouldn't be here," Afon drawls in a deadpan monotone without looking at me. He's filling a second bowl with water now and setting it down on the floor. "This would be your punishment, not mine."
I clutch the blanket to my chest in mock offense. "Wow. Okay. So in your version of the afterlife, I'm the torment?"
"No. In my version of the afterlife, there is silence.
" He straightens up, knees popping again like Rice Krispies, and leans against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed.
The flannel pulls tight across his shoulders, which I notice only because I am a keen observer of textiles, and certainly not because of the handsome, bearded man in my vicinity who happens to be wearing them.
"So either we're each others' hell, or this is just how life on the mortal plane has unfolded," I summarize.
"So it would seem."
"Wolf seems to be enjoying it, though," I point out.
"He's a hard creature to disappoint."
I eye him warily. "He looks like he'd swallow me whole."
Afon snorts. "The biggest risk he presents is kissing you to death."
I look at Wolf, who has flopped onto his back on the braided rug in front of the fire, all four legs lolling in the air. His tongue hangs out of his mouth and one ear is flipped inside out.
"On second thought," I concede, "you might be right. He doesn't look very wolfish."
Afon glances at the dog and very nearly smiles. "Don't tell him that."
I sit up, much more slowly than yesterday—fool me twice and all that—and take a breath as the headache makes itself known again.
It's duller than last night, more of a persistent, low-grade throb than the full-blown orchestral percussion section it was before.
The ibuprofen must have done some work while I was out.
Speaking of being out: How long did that last? I was only going to rest my eyes for a minute. That minute appears to have lasted about ten hours, because the light filtering through the cabin windows is gray and pale and distinctly morning-ish.
I look toward the window and freeze.
"Afon."
"Hm?"
"It's... snowing."
"Hm." He follows my gaze. "So it would seem."
I stand up from the couch. My left ankle protests this decision, but not enough to stop me from limping to the window and pressing my face to the glass like a kid outside a toy store on Christmas morning.
Except this is not a magical winter wonderland.
This is a problem.
The clearing around the cabin is buried under what has to be at least eight or nine inches of snow, and it's still coming down thick and fast, fat flakes spiraling through the air like someone emptied a celestial down pillow.
The trees at the edge of the clearing are heavy with it, their branches sagging low.
And the trail I came in on?
Gone. Completely, utterly gone. Buried under a blanket of white that extends unbroken in every direction.
Oh, shit.
I think I might be stuck.
"So," I say, trying to sound casual as I turn around to face him again. "Seems like I'm stuck here."
Afon is fiddling with a pan on the stove, his broad back to me. He grunts wordlessly in response.
"For, like... a while, probably. Based on the snow situation."
He cracks an egg one-handed. Why is that hot? It definitely shouldn't be.
"Which means," I continue blathering on, "that your whole 'sleep, leave, never come back' plan has hit a little bit of a snag."
He still doesn't look up, but I see tension in the slope of his shoulders. "The snow will stop."
"Sure. And then it'll melt. But not right away. In what—a day? Two? Three? A week?"
"You'll be fine."
"You're not seriously thinking of sending me out in that, are you?" I bleat in alarm. "I'm supposed to just go wandering through a foot of snow with a sprained ankle and a head wound? I'll die!"
He chuckles. "Tempting."
"You don't mean that."
He stops what he's doing to turn and look at me. Those brown-green eyes are piercing, though they're clouded with a kind of sadness I can't quite decipher.
"No," he answers, almost to himself. "I don't."
Then he goes back to cooking.
I look around again. It smells like coffee and woodsmoke in here. The windowpanes are frosty to the touch, but the interior of the cabin is warm, fragrant, bright, safe.
It occurs to me, in a distant sort of way, that this is actually very cozy. Under different circumstances—circumstances in which I was not being aggressively ignored by a grumpy ex-Bratva fixer with a Rottweiler and an unwavering commitment to monosyllabic conversation—this might even be nice.
"So," I try again, "since we're stuck here—"
"My answer has not changed, Caroline. It's still a no."
"You literally don't know what I was going to—"
"You were going to ask me about the envelope."
I frown and shut up.
He's right, obviously. He's been right about everything I was going to say before I said it, which is infuriating and also, on some primal lizard-brain level that I refuse to examine, a little bit hot.
Nobody has ever been able to read me like that.
My own father couldn't read me like that, and he was a Harvard Law grad and Supreme Court clerk who cross-examined me about my homework.
"Okay, fine," I concede. "Yes. I was going to ask about the envelope. But I was going to build up to it! I had a whole thing planned. There was going to be context, and emotional resonance, and a natural conversational arc—"
"'It all started when I was born,'" he quotes sardonically.
I feel my face go hot at the memory of last night. "I was concussed. That doesn't count."
A strange battle takes place at the corner of Afon's mouth. It's definitely not a smile. At most, it's the ghost of the memory of a smile that died a long time ago, rather gruesomely, and was buried in an unmarked grave.
But it's something, so I'll take it.
"Afon." I edge closer into the kitchen, and he freezes in place, one unbroken egg still cupped in his huge hand.
"I didn't chase you through the Catskills for six months because I enjoy suffering.
I mean, I clearly do enjoy suffering, on some level, because I went to law school. But that's beside the point."
He's still facing away from me, but he's listening. I can feel the full heat of his attention.
"My father left me a letter," I press on, gently. "And you left me something, too. Between the two of them, I have about sixty percent of a story that I need one hundred percent of. You are the only person alive who can give me the other forty."
Wolf lets out a little whimper in his sleep. Outside, the wind picks up and sends a gust of snow skittering against the windowpane.
Afon returns the egg to its carton, still unbroken. He turns slowly in place and looks down at me. As I meet his eyes, there's that sadness again—that deep, old, heavy fog.
"You're not going to like what's in the other forty percent," he rumbles.
My heart kicks. That's not even close to an answer, but it's still closer than anything else I've uncovered thus far.
At least it's an actual sentence about the topic.
I want to do a victory lap around the cabin, but I stay very still, because I have a sense that if I spook him, he'll retreat back behind his wall of grunts and monosyllables and never come out again.
"I'm a big girl," I whisper. "I can take it."
He studies me for a long moment. His eyes roam across my face—the lump on my forehead, the dried blood I can still feel crusted at my hairline, the rat's nest my hair has become after a night on his couch. I probably look like absolute hell. I certainly feel like absolute hell.
But I hold his gaze and I don't flinch.
Finally, Afon exhales through his nose. It's not quite a sigh. It's more like the sound of a man making a decision he knows he's going to regret.
"How do you take your coffee?" he asks.
I grin shyly. "Am I safe to assume you don't have oat milk, half-caf non-dairy whip, or lavender-and-rosehip syrup?" At the sight of the thunderstorm that that sentence inspires on his face, I hasten to correct myself. "I'm kidding. I mean, I'm not, but I am. Just black is fine."
He exhales—maybe that's a laugh? kinda? sorta?
—and then turns to start fussing with the coffee pot as the eggs on the cast iron pan start to sizzle.
I retreat to the couch again, tuck my legs under the blanket, and let myself feel, for the first time in six months, the warm, tentative glow of progress.
He's going to talk to me. He didn't say it outright, but the coffee is an olive branch, and I know one of those when I see it.
I rub Wolf's belly and let myself smile at the ceiling.
I did it. I actually did it. Plan Z, baby. Caroline Oglethorpe, one. Catskill Mountains, zero.
And then Afon is standing over me.
I didn't hear him cross the room. Not one single, solitary floorboard creak. One second, he was at the counter with his back to me; the next, he's right in my grill, close enough that I have to tilt my chin up to see his face.
He holds a chipped ceramic mug out to me. Steam curls between us.
I reach for it, but his hand doesn't move. His fingers stay wrapped around the mug, and when mine brush against them, he holds.
My grin falters.
His eyes are locked on mine, and the almost-laugh from a moment ago is gone. Whatever warmth had crept into the room has been strangled. What's left in its place is a hell of a lot less cozy.
"I'll tell you what you want to know," he says. "But I'm only going to do it once. And once I start, I don't stop. Not for tears, not for feelings, not because you decide halfway through that you've heard enough." His grip tightens on the mug. "Do you understand?"
I nod meekly. I don't feel so confident anymore. Not by a long shot.
"Your father was a good man, Caroline," he murmurs. "But good men keep secrets. And his are going to break your heart."
With that, he lets go and returns to cooking the breakfast. I watch him, huge and imposing like a boulder caged within these four unstable walls, and wonder if I made a terrible choice in coming here.
Trapped in a cabin with the ex-mafia mountain man.
What could go wrong, right?