Chapter 20
Tess
My foot caught on a root—or a rock, or whatever the universe had left in my path to trip me—and I lurched forward, arms locked around twenty pounds of cat food and a bag of litter that was slowly winning its war against my grip.
I didn't fall. Barely.
The recovery involved a stumble, a knee-dip that probably looked like a curtsy to no one, and a whispered "nope" that I directed at the ground itself.
Sunday afternoon on the grounds was quiet. Most of the riders were holed up in the Guild, and the path from the town gate to the residential wing was mine. I caught woodsmoke on the air. The Library's outer walls carried their faint mineral tang.
I shifted the litter bag higher against my hip and kept walking.
Six months ago, I'd been serving burritos in Sacramento and pretending the ache in my chest was just loneliness.
Now I had a dragon. A mate. Friends who showed up for dinners without being asked.
A life that still startled me when I wasn't braced for it—the weight of Thalon's presence at the back of my mind, the way Mason's hand found the small of my back without thinking, the sound of Anya's laugh when she forgot to be guarded.
This is mine.
The thought sat warm in my ribs.
And that was exactly the problem.
Because the thing about having something worth keeping? You noticed every shadow. Every crack in the wall you hadn't patched yet. Every silence that lasted a beat too long.
And right behind it—the restlessness. Two days.
I'd been sitting on the pattern for two days, and every hour it stayed locked inside my head was an hour someone could be using to move forward with whatever the hell they were building.
The attacks. The ring. The Library breach.
Three threads I'd been staring at since Friday, and they were one thread. Connected.
Someone was pulling it tighter.
At the back of my mind, Thalon stirred. He'd felt it too. The way I'd been circling the same thought for forty-eight hours.
I was done sitting.
"You know, most people make two trips."
Draven's voice hit me before I saw him.
I turned. He was leaning against the stone wall where the path curved toward the residences. Like he'd been waiting.
He wasn't in training gear.
That was—a problem.
Dark henley pushed to the elbows, jeans that fit too well, boots that had seen actual use.
A leather cross-body bag sat against his hip.
Without the tactical layers, everything was just there.
The breadth of his shoulders. The tattoos curving down his forearms—Polynesian patterns disappearing under rolled sleeves in a way that made my brain short-circuit about what the rest of them looked like.
I was staring. I knew I was staring.
My brain offered up a helpful reminder—professional boundaries and not objectifying your friends—but it was drowned out by the louder, more honest part that said, Yeah, but look at him.
He pushed off the wall and closed the distance between us, and before I could protest—or, honestly, before I wanted to—he lifted the litter bag out of my arms like it weighed nothing.
"I had it," I said.
"You were about to drop it." He settled the bag against his side. "Where to?"
"My suite." I adjusted the cat food against my chest. "And I was fine."
"You were one tree root away from eating pavement." He fell into step beside me, matching my pace without shortening his stride. "I was coming to find you anyway. Thought you might be around."
"Stalking me?"
"Reconnaissance." The corner of his mouth twitched. "Different skill set. Similar results."
I laughed, and the sound surprised me. The kind of laugh that came from weeks of this. Of Draven showing up when I needed him, never asking for anything back.
We walked. The path wound through a grove of oaks, their branches arching overhead.
Draven asked about my morning—I'd gone into town for supplies because Whiskey was down to his last can and had started giving me looks that suggested regicide was on the table—and I asked about his, and the conversation moved the way it always did between us now.
Then he glanced at me sideways, and his expression sharpened.
"Something's pulling at you," he said. Like he was commenting on the weather.
My step faltered. Not a stumble this time—just a hitch.
"I'm fine."
"Didn't say you weren't." He kept his eyes forward. "Just said something's pulling. Your energy's been running hot since I walked up. Underneath the laughing and the cat food logistics, there's a current."
The incubus awareness. I knew what it was—he'd explained it to me weeks ago, the way he could read emotional states through proximity, the way desire and anxiety and restlessness all had different textures to his senses.
He'd been careful about it then, like he expected me to recoil from the idea of being known that way.
I hadn't recoiled. That was the thing.
Being read by Draven didn't feel like surveillance. It felt like being seen—not the performance of okayness I'd perfected over twenty-six years of practice, but the actual thing underneath.
Heat pooled low in my stomach. I was aware of how close he was—his arm, his shoulder, the scent of him. Thunderstorms and sandalwood.
Teammate. He's your teammate.
But the decision I'd been circling since yesterday settled in my chest with sudden clarity.
He's the right person.
Not just because he'd listen—though he would. But because Draven would take the pattern apart with me, find the seams, help me build a plan that wasn't just instinct and hope. He'd been a soldier. A strategist. Someone who knew how to turn information into action without flinching from the cost.
"Yeah," I said. "I'm restless. I have something I need to talk through, and I've been sitting on it for two days, and it's making me crawl out of my skin."
He didn't push. Just nodded, adjusted the litter bag against his hip, and said, "Lead the way."
???
My suite smelled like cinnamon and cat when we walked in, which was either charming or a health code violation depending on your tolerance for orange fur on every surface.
Whiskey announced himself immediately—a one-eyed streak of orange launching off the couch and heading straight for me. He stopped short when he spotted Draven.
"Easy," Draven murmured, crouching low.
Whiskey hissed.
And then Draven did—I don't know what. Not a spell. Not anything visible. The tension dropped from my shoulders.
Whiskey's ears swiveled forward. The puff deflated from his tail.
Then he padded closer. Sniffed Draven's outstretched hand. And collapsed into trust.
"Are you—" I stared. "Are you charming my cat?"
Draven glanced up, scratching behind Whiskey's ears while my traitorous feline headbutted his palm. "He was stressed."
"He was suspicious."
"He was stressed about strangers in his territory." That small smile flickered at the corner of his mouth. "It's fine. He's fine now."
Whiskey's purr rattled louder.
I crossed my arms. "You can't just… seduce everyone who inconveniences you."
"Can't I?" He straightened. "Where do you want me to put things?"
I blinked. "Things?"
"The groceries." He nodded toward the bags still in his other hand. "Unless you'd prefer I stand here holding your cat all night."
"Lower cabinet," I said. "Left of the sink. Litter bags are in the hall closet, top shelf."
He moved through my kitchen, putting things away while I stood there warm and unsettled, just watching him.
Draven in my space. Draven in my kitchen, sleeves pushed up, tattoos shifting as he reached for the top shelf without stretching. How easily he fit here—no friction, no awkwardness, just a man putting away cat litter in a castle suite like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Don't examine it. Don't.
"Tea or coffee?" I asked, already reaching for the kettle because I needed something to do with my hands.
"Whatever you're having."
I filled the kettle. Set it on the stove. Pulled down two mugs. My fingers were steady but my pulse wasn't. He could probably feel the shift in my energy, the restlessness sharpening now that we were here, now that the door was closed, now that I'd decided.
"Tess."
I looked up. He was leaning against the counter across from me, watching me with those hazel eyes dark and steady. Not pushing. Just present.
"Whenever you're ready," he said.
The kettle wasn't boiling yet. I didn't wait for it.
"I found a pattern." The words came out faster than I intended—two days of holding this in and now it was spilling out.
"Friday night. I was going through everything—the multi-location attacks, the fighting ring intel Kane's been feeding us, the Library breach, what Ciaran confirmed about the stolen knowledge being used.
I was looking at all of it separately, the way everyone has been, and then I—I stopped looking at them separately. "
I was moving—three steps toward the table, back toward the counter. The kitchen was too small for it but I was doing it anyway, words tumbling out in the breathless, tangled way my brain worked when it finally unlocked something it had been chewing on.
"The attacks weren't random. They were probing—testing Guild defenses across different jurisdictions, mapping response times, identifying weak points.
The fighting ring isn't just about money or recruitment, it's about studying how bonds respond to trauma and coercion.
They're testing bond mechanics on live subjects, Draven. And the Library breach—"
I stopped pacing, faced him. "They weren't after general knowledge. They were after the Concordance Matrix. Ancient theory on how to sever and manipulate bonds between species. Dragon bonds. Mate bonds. Any soul-linked connection."
I took a breath. "It was stolen from the Library last year—the breach no one followed up on. A complete catalog of how every bond type works, how they form, how they hold, and how to break them."
His expression hadn't changed. Still. Focused. Every atom of his attention on me.