Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
The jungle closed around Baylin like a familiar embrace—humid air, dense vegetation, the constant hum of insects and distant bird calls. He should have felt at ease here. Wilderness was what he knew. What he was built for.
Instead, his mind kept circling back to the soft press of lips against his own.
A mistake, he’d called it. The word tasted like ash in his mouth even now, an hour later, as he moved silently through the undergrowth.
It wasn’t a mistake. That was the problem.
It had felt like the opposite of a mistake—like something clicking into place, like finding a key he hadn’t known he’d been searching for.
Mate, his beast growled, and it was getting harder and harder to dismiss his instincts.
He paused at the base of a massive tree, pressing his palm against the rough bark while he steadied his breathing. His heart rate was still elevated. Still responding to the memory of her face tilting up towards his, those blue-gold eyes full of wonder and curiosity and trust.
She had kissed him.
He had been around females before. He understood attraction, but he’d always maintained control, always kept that part of himself carefully leashed.
With Liora, his control had shattered like glass.
One touch of her lips and he’d wanted to pull her closer, to deepen the kiss, to taste her properly.
The sound that had escaped his throat—low, hungry, possessive—still echoed in his memory.
He’d scared himself with the intensity of it.
And when he’d seen the confusion on her face, the hurt when he’d called it a mistake. ..
He pushed away from the tree and continued moving, forcing himself to focus on the hunt. She needed food. Real food, not the preserved supplies she’d been surviving on. He could do this for her. He could channel whatever was happening in his chest into something useful.
The jungle here was different from the mountain territories of his youth, lush and verdant rather than cold and barren.
The tower sat at the heart of something ancient, a place where the land itself seemed to pulse with hidden power.
He’d felt it the moment he entered the region.
A resonance in his bones, a whisper at the edge of his hearing.
A rustle in the undergrowth ahead caught his attention. He dropped into a crouch, all thoughts of the kiss momentarily pushed aside as he let his beast rise to the surface. His senses sharpened, tracking scents and movement in the shadows between the trees.
There. A plump four-legged creature, its stocky body covered in iridescent scales that caught the filtered sunlight. It moved cautiously through the ferns, unaware of the predator watching from upwind.
He waited, his muscles coiled as he let it come closer.
The kill was clean, a single swift motion that ended the creature’s life before it could feel fear. He offered a brief, silent acknowledgment to the spirit of the animal, a habit ingrained from his earliest hunting lessons. Then he set about preparing the carcass for transport.
As he worked, his mind drifted again. Back to her hands on his arm, tracing his scars with such gentle curiosity. Back to her voice, soft and wondering, asking him questions that cut straight to the heart of things he’d rather not examine.
“Clean hands just mean you’ve never done anything hard.”
No one had ever said anything like that to him before. He’d spent years carrying the weight of what he’d done—the kills, the violence, the compromises he’d made to survive. He’d assumed anyone who knew the truth would recoil from it. From him.
But she had looked at his scarred hands and seen something worth accepting.
She doesn’t understand, he reminded himself. She’s been isolated her whole life. She doesn’t know what she’s accepting.
The argument felt hollow even as he made it because he’d seen the intelligence in her eyes.
He’d seen how accurately she observed the world and how quickly she processed information.
She wasn’t naive about the world—she was simply approaching it without the prejudices that came from experience.
She’d looked at him and formed her own conclusions.
And apparently, those conclusions included wanting to kiss him.
He finished his work and shouldered the prepared meat, beginning the trek back towards the tower. The sun had shifted position, sending long shadows through the canopy. He’d been gone longer than intended—lost in thought, moving slower than he should have.
She would be waiting. She’d asked if he would come back, and he’d promised.
What happens when I do?
He didn’t have an answer.
The tower rose above the jungle canopy like a finger pointing at the sky, its stone walls catching the golden light of late afternoon. He stood at the edge of the tree line for a long moment, trying to reconcile what he knew of this place with what he felt about the woman inside it.
A prison. No matter how comfortable or well-appointed, the tower was designed to keep her contained.
The AI monitored her constantly. Although the door had opened to let him leave, he was sure it was still sealed against the outside world.
She’d lived her entire life within these walls, never touching the ground, never feeling the jungle beneath her feet.
But she didn’t see it that way. To her, this was home. The only home she’d ever known.
How do you free someone who doesn’t know they’re caged?
He moved towards the tower, following the path he’d taken that morning when he’d first approached. He could see the balcony where he’d climbed up earlier and caught movement behind the glass.
She was watching for him.
Something in his chest tightened.
He tried the door, not at all surprised when it refused to open, then climbed the wall once more, the fresh meat secure against his back. When he reached the balcony, she was already there—standing in the doorway with Pip on her shoulder, her long blonde hair catching the afternoon light.
“You came back,” she said.
“I told you I would.”
“I know. But people in stories often break their promises. I wasn’t sure if real people did too.”
Real people do it all the time, he thought. That’s why the stories are full of it. But he didn’t say that. Instead, he unslung the meat and held it up for her inspection.
“I brought food. Have you ever had fresh game?”
Her eyes widened. She stepped closer, examining the prepared cuts with the same scientific curiosity she’d shown when studying his scars.
“I’ve read about hunting and preparing animals for consumption. But no—all my food comes from the supply shipments. Preserved and packaged.” She looked up at him, wonder written across her features. “You killed this? Today? For me?”
His beast howled with satisfaction at the knowledge that he had provided for his mate.
“You need proper nutrition. Whatever’s in those shipments, it can’t compare to fresh meat.”
“Will you show me how to cook it?”
He hadn’t planned on that. He had imagined himself preparing the meal while she watched and then presenting it to her. But of course she would want to participate. Of course she would want to learn.
“Yes,” he said. “I’ll show you.”
The kitchen filled with familiar scents as he worked—the sizzle of fat in the pan, the rich aroma of cooking meat, and the herbs she’d contributed. She stood beside him, close enough that he could feel the warmth radiating from her body, her attention fixed on every movement he made.
“The key is temperature,” he explained, adjusting the heat beneath the pan. “Too high and the outside burns before the inside cooks. Too low and the moisture escapes, leaving the meat tough.”
“Like soil conditions for seedlings,” she said. “Too much water drowns them. Too little and they can’t absorb nutrients. The balance has to be exact.”
“Exactly like that.”
She reached past him for a spoon, her arm brushing against his. The contact sent a jolt through him that was completely disproportionate to the casual touch. He forced himself to keep his attention on the cooking.
“You can stir this while I prepare the vegetables.”
She took his place at the stove with obvious delight, handling the pan with focused attention and barely contained excitement.
He watched her from the corner of his eye as he worked, noting how she bit her lower lip in concentration, and how a strand of hair had escaped her braid and curled against her cheek.
Stop, he told himself. Focus.
But it was difficult to focus on anything except her.
“How did you learn to cook?” she asked.
“Necessity. When you travel alone, you either learn or you starve.”
“What about before? When you were with your pack?”
“Occasionally on hunting trips, but I usually brought in the game and others prepared it. Everyone contributed according to their skills.”
“That sounds nice. Having people to share work with.”
The wistfulness in her voice made his chest ache. She’d never had that. Never had anyone to share anything with, except for the small creature on her shoulder and the disembodied voice of an AI.
“It can be,” he said carefully. “When it works well.”
“And when it doesn’t?”
“Then it’s just another kind of cage.”
She turned to look at him, the spoon pausing mid-stir. He saw the question forming in her eyes, the curiosity that never seemed to rest. But she didn’t push. Just nodded slightly and returned her attention to the pan.
He was grateful for that. Grateful she understood there were things he wasn’t ready to discuss.
They ate at the same table where she’d served him earlier, but the atmosphere was different now, charged with awareness that hadn’t been there before.
Or maybe it had been there all along, and he’d just been too stubborn to admit it.
“This is...” She paused, chewing slowly, her expression one of concentrated analysis. “Different. The texture is more complex than preserved meat. And the flavor—there are layers I wasn’t expecting.”