Chapter 8 Lucian
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Lucian
The entire station knew by eight in the morning.
I walked into the firehouse expecting the usual routine. Instead, every conversation in the building died the second I crossed the threshold. Twelve pairs of eyes and raised eyebrows of grown men suddenly fascinated by their own boots.
A rookie named Whitfield broke first. The man had zero self-preservation instincts and apparently no intention of developing any.
“So, Cap.” He leaned against the engine bay door with a grin he probably thought was charming. “Is it true that the bookshop girl’s living at your place?”
My coffee paused halfway to my mouth.
“I mean,” he continued, because common sense was clearly optional in his bloodline, “Thompson said the cops confirmed it yesterday so...”
“Whitfield.”
“Yeah, Cap?”
“Pick a latrine. Any latrine. You’re cleaning it for the next month.”
His grin collapsed. “I was just...”
“Two months.”
He shut up.
The station settled into a fragile quiet after that, but I caught the tail ends of whispered conversations throughout the morning.
During lunch, it got worse.
I was in the equipment bay doing inventory when I heard it. Two veterans at the table near the engine, voices pitched low but not low enough.
“Must be nice,” one of them said. “Playing house with the damsel in distress.”
The other one chuckled. “Wonder how they work out the schedule.”
Snickering followed and the word “rotation” floated over, then more laughter.
My clipboard hit the workbench. Both heads snapped toward me. I walked to them slowly. “Something funny?”
The first one’s smirk faltered. “Cap. We were just talking.”
“I heard.” I stopped at their table. “Here’s the thing. I don’t give a shit what you think about my personal life. But that woman lost everything in a fire. She’s got a violent ex still out there, and she’s trying to put her life back together.”
I let the silence stretch, holding his gaze until he looked away first.
“You’ve worked with me for two years,” I said quietly. “In all that time, have I ever struck you as someone you want to have a problem with?”
The smirk was fully gone now. “No, Cap.”
“Then we don’t have a problem. Do we?”
“No. We’re good.”
There was movement behind me. Solomon had drifted over from the lockers, pulling on his work gloves. He flexed his fingers, adjusting the fit, the leather creaking softly. Never once looked at the veterans but they were already watching him.
Percy leaned against the engine bay door, arms crossed. “You two look a little pale. Feeling alright?”
They cleared out fast and nearly knocked over a chair in the process.
Percy claimed one of their abandoned seats. “That was restrained of you.”
“Had to be a bit professional.”
Solomon sighed. “The whole station’s talking. By tonight, so is the whole town.”
I nodded, but my jaw ached from clenching.
Humans. They’d never understand what a mate bond meant. Couldn’t even begin to grasp it. This is why they spend their short, miserable lives chasing connections they might never find.
Idiots. Every last one of them.
I shoved the irritation down. Their ignorance wasn’t the problem. Their mouths I could handle but now, I had a different concern.
“Word travels fast in small towns,” I said. “Won’t take long before it reaches the wrong ears.”
Percy’s posture shifted. “Hudson.”
“About time he comes out of hiding.” Solomon’s voice was flat.
Percy’s eyes darkened. “And when he surfaces...”
I finished his thought and met their gaze. “It’ll be his mistake.”
***
The cabin was quiet when I returned mid-afternoon. Solomon had gone into town, checking for signs of Hudson and following up with the police. Percy was at the station finishing his shift.
My office door was open.
I heard her before I saw her. The soft rustle of pages turning, the creak of my chair under a weight it wasn’t used to. Someone was in my space, touching my things, and my wolf’s hackles rose before my brain could catch up.
She was tracing the Lytopian script on the page with her fingertip, trying to decode it through sheer force of will.
Her jaw was set. Brown contact in place, dark hair pulled back in a knot that exposed the full line of her throat.
My eyes tracked the way it shifted when she swallowed, and a very specific image surfaced unbidden: my fist wrapped in that hair, pulling her head back, my mouth on that pulse point while she gasped my name.
I blinked, shoving the thought down. This was not the time.
When she heard my footsteps, she looked up without a single ounce of guilt.
“I want to know what you know,” she said. “About Hudson and the fires. All of it.”
Every instinct I have screams to close the folder, shield her from this, handle it myself. Centuries of ruling have conditioned me to act, decide, protect. But Mira isn’t asking for my protection. She’s made her opinion on my overprotective tendencies abundantly clear.
“You went through my desk?”
“You left your door unlocked.”
“That’s not an invitation.”
“It’s not a vault either.”
I set my jaw. She set hers right back.
The defiance in her expression should have irritated me. It did irritate me. It also made my blood run hot in ways that weren’t anger. She was glaring at me with those disguised eyes and all I could think about was what it would take to make that glare softer, more desperate.
“This investigation is sensitive, Mira.”
“I’m the one he’s hunting.” She slapped the folder flat on the surface. “I have a right to know what the man who tried to kill me is capable of.”
The sound of her palm hitting wood cracked through the room. My cock twitched. I wanted to pin those hands to the desk and see if she’d fight me or melt.
I needed to end this conversation before I did something I couldn’t take back.
“We are handling it.”
“Handling it.” Her arms crossed, the movement pressing her breasts together beneath her sweater, and my gaze dropped for half a second before I caught myself.
“You’re ‘handling it’ while I play pretend in this cabin.
Meanwhile, my psychotic ex is still out there and I don’t even know what I’m up against.”
“Knowing more might hurt you and won’t even guarantee safety. You know enough.”
“I know nothing! And you three made sure of that by keeping me in the dark.” Her voice climbed. “This is my problem. Not yours. I am not helpless, and I’m not going to sit here while you run my life for me.”
She stepped closer. I could see the rapid pulse in her throat, the way her chest rose and fell with agitated breathing. My hands curled into fists at my sides to keep from reaching for her.
“You need to trust us.”
“Yes, you three have been kind to me even when I still don’t understand why and I’m grateful for that. I’ve gambled on you but I’ve known you for just a couple of days, Lucian.”
The words landed between us with more force than I expected.
My jaw ached from clenching. She was wrong about the timeline, and right about everything else, and that combination made my chest burn.
She used to look at me without the wall. Before the fire, before everything was stripped away.
I exhaled through my nose before moving to the desk. I opened Solomon’s accelerant report and turned it toward her.
“The compound used on your shop wasn’t commercial grade.” I kept my voice level. “It’s a modified accelerant, not the kind of thing you buy at a hardware store. Solomon traced it to a chemical supplier two states over with restricted access.”
Her eyes scanned the data.
“What does that mean?”
“It means Hudson either has resources beyond what a normal stalker should possess, or he has help.”
She processed this without flinching.
“What about the cabin?” she asked. “Can he find me here?”
“People know that the three of us live together but no one in town knows of this cabin.”
“Do you have weapons?”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Don’t look at me with that condescending face,” she said. “I’m not going to accidentally shoot anyone. But if Hudson shows up while all three of you are on a fire call, I want a fighting chance.”
My wolf stirred with admiration. This woman crawled through a burning building to save herself and now she wanted me to arm her.
“I’ll teach you,” I said. “Not firearms. Self-defense in close quarters.”
“Why not firearms?”
“Guns can be taken. Jammed or left in another room when you need them most.” I held her gaze. “Your body is always with you. Train it right, and you’re never unarmed.”
She considered this before nodding slowly.
“And I have other methods,” I added. “When the time comes, I’ll show you those too.”
Her eyes narrowed, filing it away. I could practically see her mental catalog updating, adding this to the growing list of things she studies about us.
“And these?” She tapped the Lytopian script in my journal. “This language doesn’t match anything in any linguistic database I’ve searched.”
Mira leaned forward on the desk to turn the journal toward me, and her hair fell over her shoulder. Her scent shifted with the movement, pushing closer, and my wolf slammed against my ribs.
“Those are personal,” I said.
“They match markings I’ve seen on Percy’s arms.”
Fuck.
“You’re observant.”
“Part of my skill set.”
The silence between us held weight. It wasn’t hostile but charged. Two people circling the edge of a truth that one wasn’t ready to hear and the other wasn’t ready to tell.
“I’m going to figure it out,” she said. “It may not be a danger to me but you are hiding something.”
“Yeah, I don’t doubt that.”
She held my gaze for one more moment and set down my journal in a way that said she’d be back for it. She squared her shoulders and walked out of my office without looking back.
I stood there, staring at the space she’d vacated, her scent still clinging to my desk.
This woman was going to be my undoing.
By sunset, she’d claimed my chair.