Chapter 16 #6
After lunch, I followed the stream farther northeast. The forest changed subtly as the ground rose, with more exposed rock along the water and fewer broad muddy banks.
A flash of blue sent me crouching beside the stream for nearly twenty minutes until a small kingfisher finally returned to a branch above the water.
Later, Tavian spotted movement high in a flowering tree and quietly pointed out the direction without trying to drag me toward it.
Luca found a clear section of bank where I could kneel without putting my equipment in mud, and Malek stayed far enough behind that nothing seemed to notice him until he wanted it to.
Agreeing to court them hadn’t made any of them forget why I was there. If anything, they seemed even more careful about working around me now, which should have made concentrating easier if Malek’s scent hadn’t still been clinging to my neck.
By late afternoon, the shadows had grown longer beneath the canopy, and the patchy sunlight reaching the water had shifted from white to a warmer gold.
I had filled most of one memory card, changed a battery, and added enough notes to my field book that the corner of the page had started curling from the humidity.
I checked my watch while Tavian stood farther upstream studying something beneath an overhanging branch.
Five twelve.
That got my attention immediately.
“Oh, damn.” I muttered as I lifted my wrist closer and mentally calculated how long the return route would take.
“What?” Luca asked as he stepped away from the tree beside me, the ease leaving his posture when he saw me checking the time.
“I can still make six if we start back now, but I wanted another twenty minutes farther upstream before turning around.” I pulled the radio from my belt while answering Luca, glancing toward the route map with growing annoyance that I hadn’t checked sooner.
“Then we head back.” Malek answered as he moved toward the trail leading to the eastern fork, already prepared to leave without making an issue of it.
“I don’t want to head back yet.” I corrected Malek while checking my position against the map and extending the radio antenna. “I still have daylight, and this area has been worth the extra time. I’ll update Mara instead.”
Malek stopped and checked the stream continuing northeast before giving me a short nod without arguing. Tavian returned from upstream while I stepped several yards toward a thinner section of canopy where reception tended to be clearer.
“Station, this is Evie. Mara, you copy?” I spoke clearly into the radio while pressing the transmit button, watching the signal indicator as static crackled through the speaker.
“Copy, Evie. Everything okay?” Mara answered a few seconds later, the slight distortion in her voice doing nothing to hide the more alert tone she used when I called outside a scheduled check-in.
“Everything’s fine. I’m continuing a little farther northeast along the smaller stream, so I’m updating my return to six-thirty.” I checked the map once more while giving Mara the change, keeping the message concise. “I’ll call again if that changes.”
“Copy. Smaller stream northeast of the eastern fork, six-thirty. Weather still looks decent from here.” Mara repeated the location and time while faint scratching came through the speaker, probably from her adding the update to the station log.
“Same on my end. Evie clear.” I glanced toward the pale patches of sky visible between the leaves before releasing the transmit button.
“Mara clear.” Mara signed off through the radio, her voice disappearing beneath the returning static.
I clipped the radio onto my belt and turned back toward the men.
None of them treated the check-in like an inconvenience or suggested that having three shifters beside me made the station’s safety system unnecessary.
Malek simply moved out of the middle of the trail.
“Lead the way.” Malek motioned toward the path following the stream, stepping aside so both the direction and the decision to continue remained mine.
I headed northeast with Tavian moving a few yards ahead after checking which side of the water I intended to follow, Luca settling near me, and Malek taking his usual position behind us.
Their formation was familiar enough now that I barely thought about it, even though nearly everything else about the day had changed.
Malek’s scent covered the side of my neck strongly enough that every few breaths reminded me of his mouth. Tavian’s feather waited safely inside my camera bag. Luca had looked me in the eye and told me that courtship meant they needed to figure out how they fit into my life too.
And I had said yes.
Not to mating them, leaving my life behind, or moving into a hidden temple after knowing them for only a handful of days.
I hadn’t decided what the rest of my future looked like.
I’d simply agreed to see where this went, and considering the way my lips still tingled from kissing Malek, that was already going to be complicated enough.
Talking animals, I was discovering, were much easier to deal with than three men I actually wanted.