Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Eden
My hands won't stop shaking.
I stand under the spray—barely lukewarm, shoulder angled out—and watch my fingers tremble against the tile.
An orc. Carver sent me to an orc.
I knew, of course. Nova told me on the drive here. I know how they look. I know what you've been told about them. But I've trusted these orcs with my life, and I'm trusting one of them with yours. He's abrasive. Don't let it fool you.
But knowing and seeing are different things. Knowing doesn't prepare you for seven feet of muscle filling a doorframe. Knowing doesn't prepare you for tusks.
The graze on my shoulder throbs. The skin is hot and tight. Maya changed the bandage at her clinic before we came here, showed me how to do it myself. But the angle is awkward, and I can barely reach it, let alone see what I'm doing.
I stay in longer than I should. Let the water run until it goes cold, then stand there shivering because getting out means facing whatever comes next. Facing him.
Maya packed shampoo but no soap, so I used the bar on the shelf—his soap, cedar and something darker, like aged bourbon. Now I smell like him.
I should mind. I'm too tired to care.
When I finally step out, wrapped in a towel that smells like pine, I reach for the clothes I wore in.
The rust-brown stain on the collar stops me. Blood from my shoulder, soaked through before a medic cleaned the wound.
I'm not putting that back on.
A stack of black undershirts sits folded on the shelf above the towels. His. Clean.
I pull one on before I can think about it. It falls past my knees, covers everything that needs covering. Good enough to get to the bedroom.
I crack the bathroom door. Listen for movement.
Nothing. The cottage is quiet.
Maya packed a bag for me—jeans, real clothes. It's in the bedroom where I dropped it when I came in.
I slip down the hall and into the bedroom—
The bed looks different.
When I first came in, the quilt was rumpled. Dented in the middle like he'd been sleeping on top of the covers. Now it's smooth. Tucked. Fresh sheets peeking out at the corners.
He changed the sheets while I was showering.
And my bag is open.
I cross to it, heart pounding. Maya packed it, so I don't know everything that should be in here, but I know the one thing I added, and I dig through the clothes, the toiletries, the—
Gone.
It's gone.
He took it. He went through my bag and he took it and—
I'm out of the bedroom before I remember what I'm wearing. The living room is dim, one lamp on in the corner.
The laptop sits on the coffee table.
Carver's laptop. The airgapped one. Opened. The screen is dark but recently touched—I can tell from the angle, the smudge on the trackpad.
He's in the kitchen with his back to me, packing what looks like dinner into containers.
"You went through my bag."
He keeps working like I'm not standing here in his shirt, vibrating with rage.
"Glad I did."
I step closer. "You had no right."
"You're under my roof. In my care. Putting both our lives at risk." He sets down a container. Turns. "You're the one who has no rights."
His gaze drops to the shirt. His jaw tightens.
He looks away first.
Good.
He has to duck through doorways. His skin is olive green with undertones of gray, like army fatigues. Tattoos disappear under a black tank top that strains across shoulders wider than I am. I shouldn't feel like I can yell at him. But I hold my ground. Barely.
He turns back to me and his hands hang loose at his sides. They could crush my skull without trying. His tusks—four of them, two smaller ones bracketing the larger pair—catch the light when he shifts his weight.
I make myself meet his eyes. Amber—warm and fierce at the same time. My breath catches.
"You were in my room. While I was—" The violation hits fresh. "I was twenty feet away. Naked. And you just—"
"My room, and I told you to lock the door."
I flinch. He's right. He said the lock works from the inside. And I hadn't.
"That doesn't give you the right—"
"I put myself in the crosshairs for you." His voice is flat. "You walked into my home with a bag I've never seen. Someone's been selling you out. And I'm supposed to trust there's nothing in there that could get us both killed?"
He's not sorry. He's not defensive. He crosses his arms over his chest—stating his position and waiting for me to catch up.
"So you waited until I was in the shower and went through my underwear?"
"I changed your sheets first."
The kindness and the violation wound together into the same act. I open my mouth. Close it.
"The laptop." He nods toward it. "What's it for?"
"I'm a writer. It's how I work."
"Can it be tracked?"
"No. It's airgapped. The prosecution gave it to me specifically because it can't be traced."
"Airgapped doesn't mean safe. It means harder to trace." He uncrosses his arms. "I should destroy it."
I cross to the coffee table, snatch the laptop, and clutch it to my chest. "You can't."
"I can. And I should. I don't know Carver. I don't know what's on that machine or who's had access to it."
"Carver gave it to me to keep my mind off the case." I force my voice steady. "To give me something to do. Writing is how I stay sane. You take this away, and you're stuck in a cottage with a woman who has nothing to do but pace and spiral for a week."
He studies me. I can see him calculating—the risk of the laptop versus the risk of me spiraling completely.
"You want me calm? You want me manageable? Let me keep it."
A muscle in his jaw twitches.
"It stays off unless you're using it," he says finally.
"Fine."
"And if I find out it's not as clean as you think it is, I burn it. No discussion."
"Fine."
He watches me. Processing. Those amber eyes missing nothing.
"You've thought this through."
"I've had weeks to think everything through." I clutch the laptop tighter. "You could have asked."
"And you could have been forthcoming from the start."
"I don't know you."
"Exactly." He crosses his arms. "And I don't know you. So I checked."
"You're not going to ask next time either, are you? Next time something bothers you, you're going to handle it."
"Probably."
"At least you're honest."
"Only virtue I've got."
There's something almost like humor in his voice. It catches me off guard.
The tension loosens, a fraction. And then his gaze drops again and travels down. Takes in the black shirt hanging off my shoulder, the hem falling past my knees, my bare calves underneath.
He doesn't look away.
Not immediately. His eyes drag back up—slow, like it costs him something—and when they reach my face, there's heat in them. Raw. Unguarded. Gone so fast I almost miss it, shuttered behind that flat amber stare.
But I saw it.
Heat floods my face. I tug at the hem with my free hand, trying to cover more of myself. "I left my bag in the bedroom. As you know. I was borrowing this to get back there."
He laughs.
It's low, barely more than a breath, but it's there. One beat of something real.
Then he turns back to the counter. "There are more in the dresser. Help yourself."
"Thank you." I start toward the bedroom.
"Sit down."
I stop. "I need to change."
"You need to eat." He doesn't look at me. "You're shaking. You've been trembling since you walked out of that bathroom. Eat first. Then change."
I want to argue. Want to tell him I don't need him managing me, feeding me, treating me like something broken.
But my hands are trembling. He's not wrong.
I set the laptop on the table beside me. Close enough to grab.
I sit.
The kitchen table is small—two chairs, barely room for plates. He'd have to fold himself in half to fit across from me. Instead he stays at the counter, his back a wall between us as he dishes pasta into a bowl.
It smells like garlic and butter and something richer underneath.
He sets it in front of me. The bowl is chipped at the rim—old, well-used. He sets a fork beside it.
"Maya's cooking. Don't get used to it." He turns back to the counter. "I'm more of a carnivore."
I stare at the pasta. Steam curls up from the bowl. The smell alone makes my stomach cramp with sudden, vicious hunger. When did I last eat? The clinic, maybe. A granola bar Maya pressed into my hand.
I eat. He cleans.
A pot clangs against the sink and I flinch so hard my fork hits the table.
He freezes.
I freeze.
My heart is pounding, breath caught somewhere in my throat.
Glass breaking. Boots on the porch. Gunshots—
"Sorry." He doesn't move. "Should've warned you."
I'm in the cottage. The pot is in the sink. He's standing three feet away, frozen like any sudden move might shatter me.
I force myself to breathe. Pick up the fork. "It's fine."
It's not fine. We both know it.
He moves differently after that. Slower. Every motion telegraphed. When he opens a cabinet, he does it gently. When he sets a dish in the drying rack, he places it instead of dropping it.
He's being careful with me.
I hate that I notice. I hate that it helps.
The bowl is half empty when something changes.
He goes still. Not the careful stillness from before—something else. His head turns toward the window, nostrils flaring. His whole body shifts, weight dropping, hands spreading at his sides.
"What—"
"Quiet." His hand comes up. Stay.
Every trace of the orc who laughed at my borrowed shirt is gone. What's left is something older. Something that makes the hair on my arms stand up.
He moves to the window. Something that big shouldn't move that quiet. He pulls the curtain back an inch. Peers into the darkness.
I've stopped breathing.
Then I see his face.
His lips have pulled back from his tusks. Not a snarl—something worse. Something hungry. His eyes have gone flat, pupils blown wide, and there's nothing human in them. Nothing thinking. Just the pure, cold calculation of something deciding whether to kill.
The fork slips from my fingers. Clatters against the bowl.
His head snaps toward me.