Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
The bread was perfect.
Liora knew this because Baylin had eaten three slices already, each one torn from the loaf with his hands and consumed with a focus that bordered on blissful.
She tried not to stare, but watching someone eat food she’d prepared was a novelty she couldn’t quite get over.
Every bite he took felt like a small victory, a confirmation that she’d done something right.
“You’re not eating,” he observed, glancing up from his bowl.
“I’m watching you eat. It’s fascinating.”
“Fascinating?”
“I’ve never seen anyone eat that way before. Susan was always very concerned about table manners. Napkins in laps, small bites, careful chewing.” She gestured at him with her spoon. “You just... eat. Like you’re actually hungry. Like you’re enjoying it.”
“I am hungry. And I am enjoying it.”
He’s enjoying it. The words sent a warm flush through her chest. She ducked her head and focused on her own stew, though she’d already lost count of how many times she’d stirred the same spoonful without actually lifting it to her mouth.
Pip sat on the corner of the table, having claimed a small pile of vegetables that she had set aside for him.
He’d been watching Baylin intensely throughout the meal, but his concentration had gradually faded as the food disappeared.
Now he seemed more interested in a particularly stubborn piece of carrot than in their guest.
“Tell me about your pack,” she said suddenly. The question had been building in her mind since he’d mentioned communal meals. “What was it like? Living with other people?”
His hand paused halfway to the bread. Something that looked like pain flickered across his face before it was replaced by a careful neutrality.
“Complicated.”
“Everything interesting is complicated. That’s what makes it worth studying.”
“You want to study my pack?”
“I want to understand.” She set down her spoon, no longer pretending to eat. “I’ve read about social structures. Hierarchies and bonds and territorial behaviors. But reading about something isn’t the same as experiencing it. You’ve lived it. You know what it actually feels like.”
He was quiet for a moment, tearing another piece of bread into smaller pieces without eating them. “It feels like belonging,” he said finally. “Like having a place where you fit. Where people know you and accept you anyway.”
“That sounds...” She searched for the right word. “Safe.”
“It can be. When it’s working properly. When the alpha is strong and fair, when the hierarchy is respected, and when everyone understands their role.” His jaw tightened. “When it’s not working, it feels like a trap.”
“Is that why you left?”
The question hung in the air between them.
She watched emotions move across his face and knew he was weighing how much to tell her and how much to hold back.
She found herself leaning forward, drawn by the complexity of his expressions.
So many subtle shifts, so many layers of meaning. Faces were endlessly fascinating.
His face is endlessly fascinating, she corrected herself. And then felt her cheeks warm at the thought.
“The pack I grew up in had a good alpha originally,” he said slowly.
“But then his mate died and he eventually took a second mate. She conspired with one of the females in the pack to elevate her son and betray the son of the first mate. He left rather than see the pack tear itself apart, and asked me to stay behind. To protect the others while he was gone.” His hands stilled on the bread.
“I did the best I could, but in the end, it was hopeless. I stayed too long, trying to fix what couldn’t be fixed.
By the time I left, I’d lost some sense of myself. ”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I stopped knowing where I belonged. The pack wasn’t home anymore, but I didn’t have anywhere else to go. So I started moving. Looking for something, though I couldn’t have told you what. Even after I was reunited with my friend, I couldn’t settle.”
“And that’s why you came looking for the tower.”
“That’s how I found the tower.” His eyes met hers, and something in their green depths made her breath catch. “How I found you.”
The silence stretched between them, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. It felt charged somehow, electric. She became acutely aware of the space between them—the width of the table, the distance she could cross if she just stood up and walked around to his side.
Why would I want to do that?
She knew why. She’d read about it in her books, the ones Susan had hidden and left behind. The ones she’d found anyway, hidden in the back of the library behind volumes on agricultural theory. Stories about men and women who felt drawn to each other. Who wanted to touch and be touched.
She’d thought she understood those stories. Now, sitting across from Baylin with her heart doing strange things in her chest, she realized she hadn’t understood anything at all.
“Your arm,” she heard herself say. “The scars. How did you get them?”
He glanced down at his arms, where a network of pale lines crossed his silver bronze skin. Some were thin and precise, others jagged and rough. A history written in damaged tissue.
“Different sources. Training accidents when I was young. Fights when I was older. A few from hunts that didn’t go as planned.”
“May I see?”
He hesitated, then extended his arm across the table, but she pushed back her chair and moved to his side, telling herself it was scientific curiosity. She studied injuries and healing in her plants all the time. This was simply... research.
She took his arm in both hands, turning it to catch the light.
His skin was warm under her fingers, and she could feel the steady pulse of blood beneath the surface.
The scars varied in texture—some smooth and flat, others raised and ridged.
She traced one with her fingertip, following its path from wrist to elbow.
“This one’s deep,” she murmured. “Whatever caused it must have nearly reached the bone.”
“A blade. I was careless, and my opponent wasn’t.”
“But you won?”
“I survived. Sometimes that’s the same thing.”
She moved to another scar, this one a cluster of small punctures arranged in a crescent. “These look like teeth marks.”
“Because they are. A mountain cat, defending its territory. I didn’t realize I’d wandered into its hunting grounds.”
“What happened?”
“I killed it.” His voice was matter-of-fact. “It was attacking to protect its young. I understood that. But it would have killed me if I hadn’t defended myself.”
Her fingers stilled on his skin. “That’s sad.”
“It’s survival. The jungle doesn’t care about fairness or morality. You do what you have to do to stay alive.”
She thought about that for a moment, her hands still resting on his arm. The jungle she’d seen from the tower windows had always seemed beautiful—a vast green wilderness full of mystery and wonder. She’d never considered how many things in it might want to kill her.
Is that why I’m kept here? Because the world is full of teeth and blades?
“Are you afraid?” he asked quietly.
“Of what?”
“Of me. Of what I am. What I’ve done.”
She looked up and found him watching her with an intensity that made something flutter in her stomach.
His eyes were so green, like the heart of the jungle, like the new growth she coaxed from her seeds.
And in them she saw something that made her chest ache—vulnerability.
As if her answer mattered to him. As if he was afraid of what she might say.
“No,” she said. “Should I be?”
“I’ve hurt people, Liora. Killed them, when I had to. My hands aren’t clean.”
“Clean hands just mean you’ve never done anything hard.” She turned his arm over, exposing the underside where the skin was softer, the scars fewer. “These tell me you’ve survived. That you’ve fought to stay alive. How could I be afraid of that?”
His breath caught. She felt it in the subtle tension of his muscles, the slight tremor that ran through his arm. And something about that reaction—that evidence that her words affected him—sent a rush of warmth through her entire body.
She didn’t really understand these feelings. She couldn’t categorize them the way she categorized her plant experiments and file them away in neat observations and logical conclusions. They were messy and overwhelming and completely outside her experience.
But they were also wonderful.
“Your skin is different here,” she said, tracing the inside of his wrist. “Softer. The pigmentation is lighter too.” She leaned closer, examining the fine network of veins visible beneath the surface. “I can see your pulse. It’s faster than I expected.”
“Liora.”
“Yes?”
“What are you doing?”
She looked up, startled to find how close their faces had become.
She was bent over his arm, her nose practically touching his skin, and his face was right there, only inches away.
She could count his eyelashes if she wanted to.
She could see the scar that crossed his cheekbone, the one she’d noticed earlier but hadn’t had a chance to study.
“I’m observing,” she said. But her voice came out breathless, and she wasn’t sure anymore what she was observing. His arm? His face? The way tiny green flames seemed to glow in his eyes?
“You observe very thoroughly.”
“I like to be comprehensive.”
His mouth curved—not quite a smile, but something close. The expression transformed his face, softening the hard angles, making him look younger. More approachable. More...
Beautiful, her mind supplied. The word seemed inadequate. She’d seen beautiful things before—sunrises, flowers, the patterns of light through water. But none of them had made her feel like this. Like her chest was too small for everything happening inside it.