Chapter 9
Ellie
A sound I can't place pulls me out of sleep—steady, rhythmic, close. Pen on paper.
I lie still for a second, orienting myself.
The sheets smell wrong for my apartment and the pillow carries leather and something sharper underneath, not-human, and my body aches in places that make my face heat.
His shirt hangs off my shoulder, the hem sitting mid-thigh, the sleeves rolled twice and still covering my hands.
I pull the cuff to my nose and breathe in.
The pen keeps scratching. I follow the sound down the hall and stop in the kitchen doorway.
Colt sits at the table with a mug of coffee and the club's ledger open in front of him. Reading glasses low on his nose. He writes with his left hand, entries in columns so neat they look printed, the pen moving without pause. He trusts his own handwriting more than software.
He hasn't noticed me. Or he has, and he's letting me stand here.
I lean against the doorframe and watch him. The morning light through the kitchen window catches the green-grey of his forearms, the scars across his knuckles, the way his shoulders round forward over the ledger. He pushes his glasses up. They slide back down.
My body remembers every hour of last night.
The width of his hands on my hips. The growl that vibrated through the mattress into my spine.
The careful, slow push into me and the way he watched my face for permission with every inch.
I press my thighs together and the soreness sends a flush from my collarbone to my ears.
I don't want to go home. The thought lands plain and simple.
"There's coffee," he says without looking up. "Second shelf, blue mug."
"You heard me."
"I smelled you." He turns the page. "Three minutes ago. You linger in the hallway."
I pour coffee and sit across from him.
He closes the ledger, takes his glasses off and looks at me across the table. His eyes without the frames are darker, wider, and when they drop to the shirt hanging off my shoulder his mouth parts and his expression tightens my stomach.
"I need to do something today," I say. "Before I lose my nerve."
"Derek?"
"I should have done it a week ago."
He nods. "I'll be here when you're done."
I drive home, shower, put on my own clothes. His shirt goes folded on my passenger seat because I'm not ready to wash his scent out of it.
The Cove Hotel lobby smells like espresso and furniture polish.
Derek sits in one of the leather armchairs by the fireplace, legs crossed, dressed in the charcoal blazer he wears when he wants to look important.
He has his phone in his hand and his serious face on. I bought that face for eight years.
He sees me and stands. "El. I'm glad you came."
"You sat on a bench outside my library and used a twelve-year-old girl to make your point." I don't sit down or move closer. "You told me I'm playing house with her because I never had a child of my own."
His mouth opens. "That's not what I—"
"That same week I sat in front of a county board and defended my job because someone filed complaints about my personal life.
And then a man I've never seen found me in a parking lot and told me he knows what time I lock up.
" My keys press into my palm. "You showed up and my life started falling apart.
Maybe that's a coincidence or maybe not but I don't care. "
He shifts his weight. His pitch comes anyway, softer now, sadder around the edges. He talks about therapy, about realizing what he lost, about the apartment in Portland and how empty it feels without me. He touches my arm when he says "us" and I move away.
"You left me for someone younger and thinner," I say. "And you're back because she left you and I'm convenient. I have always been convenient to you. That's not love. You just don't want to be alone."
He recovers fast, the way he does, rerouting to the next argument on his list. "Ellie, listen to yourself. You moved to a fishing village. You work at a county library. And now you're involved with—" He drops his voice. "He's a monster, El. An orc. You're better than this."
The lobby is quiet. A woman behind the front desk glances over and glances away.
"He's a father and a scholar and the most decent man I've ever met." The shaking stops. "He sees me. Not the safe version. Not the convenient version. Me. All of me. You never did."
Derek's face hardens. "You're making a mistake."
"You came here and tried to take my life apart. It didn't work. Go home, Derek."
I turn and walk through the lobby and push through the front door into the salt air.
The sheriff's office sits two blocks from the hotel. I almost drive past it. But instead I pull in.
The deputy behind the desk is young, polite, and halfway through a sandwich until I start talking.
I tell him about the notes pushed through the mail slot at the library.
The flyers. I tell him about the man who found me in the parking lot after the board meeting and recited my closing schedule back to me.
I give him Dale Rickman's name and he writes everything down in neat capital letters.
"We'll increase patrols around the library," he says. "Especially in the evenings. I'll pass this along to the sheriff."
I nod. It's not much. I didn't expect much. But I said it out loud, someone official wrote it down, and the next time something happens there's a paper trail that doesn't depend on me folding notes into a drawer. And it doesn't put Colt or the Feral Sons in the firing line.
Sarah opens the clubhouse door mid-sentence—"Reeve, put that down"—and steps aside to let me in. Reeve stands behind her holding a boot by the lace, swinging it.
"Kitchen. Jess made tea."
"Jess doesn't make tea."
"She can't have bourbon for another two months and she's taking it out on everyone. Tea is her compromise. Don't compliment it."
Sarah's mouth twitches. "She told Finn during a sparring session. He dropped his guard and she knocked him flat and then told him while he was on the mat. Her words: tactical advantage."
The clubhouse kitchen smells like toast and the lived-in chaos of a space shared by too many people with too few dishes.
Jess sits on the counter with her feet dangling, a mug of tea balanced on her knee, her hair pulled back in the messy knot she wears when she's off duty.
She doesn't look pregnant. She looks like Jess.
"Heard about the board meeting," Jess says. "Heard you told them to go fuck themselves."
"I told them my personal life has no bearing on my professional work."
"Same thing." She sips her tea. "Sit down."
I pull a chair out and sit. Reeve appears from under the kitchen table, grabs my jeans with both fists, and hauls himself into my lap like he's summiting a cliff. He turns around, sits, and puts his thumb in his mouth.
"I need to ask you something," I say. "Both of you."
Sarah sits across from me. Jess stays on the counter.
"Colt told me about the claiming bite last night." I adjust Reeve to a more comfortable position. "He explained all of it. The bond, the heartbeats, what it means. He told me it's permanent." I look at both of them. "But he didn't offer it."
Sarah's hands go still on the table. Jess lowers her mug.
"How did you know you were ready?" I ask. "It's forever. Literally forever. How do you know?"
Sarah and Jess look at each other. The glance lasts half a second and carries an entire conversation I'm not part of.
"That's not the right question," Sarah says.
"What do you mean?"
"You're asking how we knew we were ready. But that's not the problem. You're ready. Anyone in this room can see that." Sarah pauses. "The question is why Colt isn't. And that's his story to tell, not mine."
"Then why are you both looking at each other like you already know?"
Sarah laces her fingers on the table. She takes a breath before she starts, the way she does when the answer is going to hurt.
"Colt claimed Maren," she says. "Well before Lily, before any of it.
The bite links heartbeats, feelings, emotions, everything.
And the human mate's body changes. You live as long as the orc does—a hundred and fifty years, maybe more.
He felt her heartbeat in his chest every day they were together.
Her moods, her joy, the way she laughed and the way she cried.
That's what the bite does. It makes you carry each other. "
I know what she's about to say. My arms tighten around Reeve.
"The bond broke when Maren died," Sarah says. "He literally felt her heartbeat stop inside his chest. He carried that emptiness for years before the scar healed enough for him to breathe without feeling the gap where she used to be."
The kitchen goes quiet.
"Finn asked me during the hurricane," Jess says. "I said yes before he finished the sentence. But Finn hadn't lost anyone. He came to me whole." She lifts her eyes. "Colt isn't."
I hold Reeve tighter. My throat closes.
He felt her die. Not in the abstract, not the way you read about it in a book and cry and close the cover and go make dinner. He felt it happen inside his own body.
I read romance novels. I know what the claiming bite looks like in fiction—usually the last chapter, the grand gesture, the proof that love wins.
Nobody writes the sequel where the bond breaks and the survivor has to keep breathing with half a heartbeat for the rest of his life.
But Colt lived it. This isn't a romance novel, it's real life.
"So, he's not afraid of the bite," I say. "He's afraid of what happens if it ends."
Sarah holds my gaze. "Now you know."
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I shift Reeve to one arm and check the screen.
A text from Colt: Looked into the Humans First group. County filings show three outside donors over ten thousand dollars each. None local. This isn't just Dale Rickman and a stack of flyers. Someone's bankrolling it.
I read it twice. He's not angry. He's working. That's what Colt does with a threat—he doesn't use his fists, he uses his mind.
I hand Reeve back to Sarah and stand.
"Everything okay?" Jess asks.
"Colt looked into some hate mail I've been getting at the library from Humans First. He's tracing the group's funding."
Sarah nods like she expected nothing else. "He'll find what he's looking for. He always does. He's a smart cookie."
I hug them both. Jess tolerates it for two seconds and then pushes me off with one hand. Sarah holds on longer, her chin on my shoulder, and whispers, "Be patient with him."
My car idles in the clubhouse parking lot. The sun sits low and the air coming through the cracked window smells like pine and gravel dust.
I get it now. He gave Maren the bite and she died, he felt it happen inside his own body, he cares for me and he can't do it again.
Not yet. Maybe not ever. I will have to learn to be happy with either outcome if I want to be with him.
I know he cares for me, I can feel it in his hands on my waist, in the meals he cooks, in the way he calls me sweet girl.
But the bite is where his courage runs out, and I really do understand why.
He'll get there or he won't, and either way the choice has to be his.