Chapter 2 #2
For one heartbeat, he looks at me the way he looked at whatever's outside. Like I'm prey. Like I'm meat.
Then it's gone.
He blinks. His face shifts back to something I recognize—guarded, gruff, controlled. But I saw what was underneath. I saw what lives behind his eyes when he stops holding it back.
He sees me seeing it.
My chair scrapes back. I don't remember standing.
Every instinct I have says run. Get to the bedroom. Lock the door. Find something heavy. But my legs won't move because the thing between me and the door is the thing I'd be running from.
I'm trapped.
For three seconds, I am genuinely afraid he's going to kill me.
Something shutters in his expression. He turns back to the window. When he speaks, his voice is flat. Dead.
"Deer. Heard it in the brush."
I don't answer. Can't.
He lets the curtain fall. Doesn't look at me again.
"You should know the rules," he says, and crosses to the counter. Puts the whole kitchen between us.
The distance is deliberate. He's not giving me space.
He's giving himself a cage.
My heart is still pounding. "Nova already—"
"Nova gave you the overview. I'm giving you the details.
" He leans against the counter, arms crossed.
"No one comes to this cottage. No one. I've arranged for my bike to be moved, so there's nothing outside to signal someone's here.
As far as anyone knows, I'm in New York on club business.
And no one visits me out here anyway, so we're covered. "
"You're such a charmer. Can't imagine why."
He ignores that.
"No one goes outside but me, and only after dark. Curtains stay closed. Small lamps only." He pauses. "You do what I say, when I say it. No questions. No hesitation. If I tell you to hide, you hide. If I tell you to run, you don't look back."
"And if something happens to you?"
"Nothing's going to happen to me."
"That's not an answer."
His jaw tightens. "If this goes south, you do what you did before. But you don't stop running when you get away. You keep going north until you reach an old log cabin. The man who lives there is named Gus. Old. Scary as hell. You tell him to contact Crow."
"Scarier than you?"
He gives me a look. "Old war vet who thinks the only greeting strangers deserve is the barrel of a sawed-off Remington. But you use the club's name, and he'll take you in."
"Great." I stab a noodle. "From the frying pan into the fire."
"Human, you made that leap when you went to the police."
Human. The word lands strange—not my name, just a category. He says it like a reminder. To himself or to me, I'm not sure.
"You think I was wrong to report what I heard?"
He pushes off the counter. Takes my bowl—I hadn't realized I'd finished—and sets it in the sink. His back is to me when he answers.
"Stupid. But not wrong."
He rinses the bowl and sets it in the rack. I watch his hands move—careful now, quiet—and try to reconcile the orc who threatened to destroy my laptop with the one who changed my sheets. The one who went predator at a sound in the brush.
"Nova mentioned the sheriff," I say. "Ash. He's an orc too?"
"There are a handful of us in the Ridge. Ash, Vargan, Crow, me. A prospect named Knox." He glances over his shoulder. "That a problem?"
"No." I think about it. "Not what I expected."
"What did you expect?"
"I don't know. More hiding. Less... community."
"We're done hiding." He says it simply, but there's weight underneath. History. "This is our home."
I stand. My legs are steadier now, the tremors mostly gone. Food helped. I cross to the sink, reach for the dish towel hanging by the stove—
"Leave it." He's beside me before I register him moving. His hand closes over mine on the towel.
I've never seen anything like it up close. His fingers are twice the size of a man's, each knuckle as thick as a walnut. My entire hand disappears under his.
"I'll do it. Get some sleep."
His fingers are warm. Rough with calluses. And where they brush mine, something jolts through me—sharp and sudden, not quite electric but close. I feel it in my palm, my wrist, somewhere deeper.
His hand tightens. Just once. Just for a second.
Then he lets go like I burned him.
We both felt that. Whatever that was.
I step back too fast. He turns away faster.
"Tomorrow we establish a routine," he says. Giving me space.
"Goodnight, Diesel."
He grunts. Doesn't look up from the sink.
I retreat to the bedroom and close the door behind me.
For a moment, everything is still. The cottage settles around me—wood creaking, pipes ticking. Normal sounds. Safe sounds.
My hand hovers over the lock.
I think about what's on the other side of this door. An orc. A stranger who went through my bag without permission but changed my sheets first. Who noticed I was trembling and made me eat. Who went still as death at a sound outside and turned into something I don't have words for.
I keep seeing my hand disappearing under his. How easy it would be for him to break me. How careful he was not to.
Deer, he said.
I don't believe him.
Through the thin walls, I hear him moving. Not settling onto the couch—moving. The soft creak of floorboards. A window being checked. Another. The back door opening, closing. His footsteps circling the cottage, then returning.
He's checking the perimeter. At midnight. After telling me it was just a deer.
The part of me that's been screaming for weeks goes quiet.
But a new voice takes its place. Quieter. Colder.
What is he expecting?
I don't turn the lock.
I lie down in the dark and listen to him pace.