13. Soren
SOREN
Ican’t turn my head inside the stone, but the heat comes to me anyway. Gold moves between the booths and the counter all evening, customer after customer, and not one shape in this diner burns angry about me. Unsettled, yes.
The gold flares at what’s crouched against the jukebox, holds steady through the whispering, then settles back down over their plates. Not one of them leaves their food over it.
Maybe resting here with my Settling off was a bad idea. There are mountains within an easy glide of this valley, ridgelines with no witnesses, and I chose the corner between a jukebox and a window because she works here. I wanted to be close to her, as close as this body can be.
All day her voice has carried to me across the room, and her strawberries have run over every scent of grease and coffee in this diner.
Rest in the stone was never truly rest, not with my mind awake inside it listening for hammers.
Near her, the listening stops. I still don’t know whether Shadow Wolf Creek has room for something like me, but the space beside her does, and I’m in it.
She’s the one red shape in a room full of gold, and tonight that red is burning dimmer than it should. Her steps drag between the tables, and I catch every yawn she hides behind her wrist. She didn’t rest as I asked her to.
Cup after cup of coffee goes into my mate, and almost no food follows it down. I don’t like it, and there’s nothing I can do about it from in here but keep count. When the sun lets me go, she rests. I’ll see to it myself.
I keep count of the cook, too. His whispered one-date speech reached me from this corner, and my answer waits on sundown.
She talks to me in passing, the same way she talked to me when I was a statue parked by the front door. She wipes down a table and tells me her favorite color is yellow. She passes with a loaded tray and hopes I like Southern food, because that’s all she knows how to cook.
She doesn’t wait for answers. She knows I’ll bring them tonight. Guarding kings, I learned maps and gate rotations. Guarding her, I learn favorites, and I file every one.
Not once today has she been upset that I’m here. That astonishes me more than this whole town does.
The customers thin out with the daylight, and she finally comes to me minutes from sundown. She wipes a bead of sweat from her forehead with the back of her wrist and sags against the jukebox beside me.
“It’s been a busy one.” She fans herself with the front of her apron and watches the last few booths empty out. “I heard Thursdays are prep day. Folks get their shopping in so they can lay low for the weekend.” Her shoulder settles against my arm. “Shelly says weekends around here are real quiet.”
She pulls her tips from her apron pocket and thumbs through the bills.
“I bought some fabric to make you some pants.” The count comes out in her favor, and she grins.
“Might even be enough for some shirts.” She tucks the money away and gives her pocket a pat.
“Can’t wait for you to wake up so I can get your measurements. ”
She emptied her pockets today to make a monster presentable. I would pour every vault I ever guarded into her lap, and tonight I intend to start.
She works one heel out of her sneaker and rolls her ankle slow before sliding it back in. Hours on this floor have her feet aching, and she keeps the wince off her face for the last few customers. Once I’m free, I’ll carry her until the pain gives up.
The last stretch of dusk is agony with her this close.
Andy comes out of the back pulling his jacket on and stops short, frowning at the two of us.
“If that’s your mate,” he says, jabbing a finger my way, “then you need to tell him this ain’t a good place to rest.”
Treasure scowls at him and gives him nothing else.
He glares at me next, though his heat says he’d rather be anywhere else. “You may work here, but it’s still my diner. I get a say in who sits in it all day.”
She rolls her eyes. Andy’s gold wavers my way one more time, and then he storms out into the evening with his keys jangling.
“It’s okay, Soren.” She runs her fingers over my face, and her warmth soaks through the stone. “I’m gonna go buss these tables down.” She glances at the curtained windows. “You should be waking up soon, huh?”
Soon, I answer, though nothing in this body can say it yet. She doesn’t wait on a reply she knows isn’t coming.
She crosses to a corner booth and breaks the table down. The cook comes out with one of the gray tubs she’s been calling a buss bin all night and sets it on the table to help her load the dishes.
“Here to try again, huh?” She stacks plates without looking at him. “One thing I can say is you’re persistent.”
“I already have the perfect date lined up,” Lamar says.
I test the hold one more time, and it doesn’t give, which is lucky for him.
She props a hand on her hip and tilts her head at him. Her red flares with the first real irritation I’ve read off her all day. “I’m not dating you, even if you take that other job.”
“Why?” Lamar sets a plate in the bin and waits on his answer.
The sun drops behind the mountains first, and the stone lets me go.
It leaves my claws, then runs off the rest of me, gray thinning away until my skin is my own again.
I blink awake and stand to my full height, keeping my wings folded close behind my back. There are still a few humans finishing their plates, and this town has yet to run from me. No sense giving it a reason to start.
Forks pause at the last few tables. The couple in the corner booth stares, a woman aims her phone at me, and the old human by the window lifts his coffee mug my way and goes back to his eggs.
Eggs and coffee at sundown. Every human I have ever watched eats that meal in the morning.
“Oh, shit,” Lamar breathes, a plate stopped halfway to the bin.
Treasure lights up, and then she’s crossing the room to me, quick. “Hey.”
I look down at her, and I do what I’ve been waiting to do since she leaned on that jukebox. My claws close careful around her waist, and I lift her clean off the floor.
“Whoa?—” She grabs my arm and blinks up at me.
I smile and lean in, pressing my forehead to hers. She doesn’t pull away. Her hand comes up and rests against my face, small and warm along my jaw.
“I guess this is good morning for you,” she says, her thumb moving soft.
“Ah, fuck.” Lamar’s voice cuts in from the booth. “You’re fated to that thing, huh?”
I lift my head from hers and give him a look with nothing warm left in it.
“Yep.” Treasure pops the P on it and kicks her feet.
“No.” I keep my eyes on the cook. “Your feet are sore.”
“I still have a shift to finish. I need to make money so I can pay for??—”
I face her then, her legs swinging while she tries to wiggle out of my arms and gets exactly nowhere. “If it’s money that concerns you, Treasure, I have plenty. I’ll see it delivered to you tonight.”
Her legs stop swinging, and she settles into my arms. “Oh, really?”
I turn back to the cook and give him all of my attention. “I have listened to you pursue my mate despite her every attempt to decline.”
Lamar’s hands come up fast. “I didn’t know??—”
A growl builds in my chest and rolls out across the diner. Silverware rattles in his bin, and my eyes burn as bright as they’ll go. I take one step and lean down until we’re level, close enough for him to count my fangs.
Lamar backs into the booth so hard the table screeches, and the sharp stink of fear pours off him and drowns out the grease. Good. Let him wear that a while, and let him remember it the next time he leans close to what’s mine.
“Whew. Down, boy.” Treasure pats my arm.
I hold the cook’s eyes a moment longer, then set her down on her feet.
She stares up at me. “You can’t eat Lamar.”
“It is not my intention to eat him,” I tell her, and I mean that.
Intentions can change.
“Okay, smarty-pants. You can’t kill him either.” Her hands land on her hips.
“I will not leave you until your shift concludes,” I tell her.
“That’s not what I?—” She points a finger up at me. “We ain’t done with that.”
The back door swings open, and the dishwasher walks out wearing the biggest grin this diner has seen all day. “I knew you were real.” He gets halfway to offering me a hand, reconsiders somewhere around my claws, and wipes it on his apron instead. “Hi. I’m Devon. Welcome to Shadow Wolf Creek.”
Whatever’s left of the growl dies in my chest, and my wings ease down loose. Lamar takes off into the back, pushing past the boy without a word.
I bow my head to Devon. “Thank you.”
He picks the buss bin up off the table and carries it into the back, unbothered. My mate guards that one between refills.
Now I do too.
Treasure crosses her arms at me, smiling anyway. “So what, you’re just gonna stand in this corner till the end of my shift and scare off my customers?”
I answer by lowering myself into the same crouch I held all day, and I keep my eyes on hers while I do it.
“Well, alright then,” she says.
She shakes her head and gets back to her closing work, wiping down tables and restocking what she likes to call the condiments.
It’s one more word she taught me without meaning to, along with the buss bin and the two-top. Guarding has taken me to towers, treasure vaults, and the walls of burning cities. This corner is the first post I’ve ever wanted to keep.