13. Chapter 13
The first thing Sage became aware of was warmth.
Not the artificial heat of the cabin’s woodstove, but the solid presence of Declan’s body curved around hers. His arm curved around her, heavy across her waist. His breath stirred the hair at her nape in slow, even rhythms that told her he still slept.
The second thing was the bond. Warm. Steady. Terrifying.
The third thing was that she couldn’t lie still.
She shifted out from under his arm carefully. He stirred but didn’t wake, his hand searching the mattress once before settling. She stood and pulled on his flannel shirt from the floor, the hem falling past her hips, and moved to the window.
Snow had fallen during the night. The world outside was white and still.
Her mind wouldn’t hold still to match it.
She hadn’t planned to sleep with him. Hadn’t planned any of this. She’d crossed pack territory to find a killer and instead she’d found something she didn’t have a clean word for yet. A man who carried grief the way she did, methodically, in private, with no expectation of relief.
That was the part she couldn’t stop pressing at. Something heavy ran beneath the bond. Not mate-bond tension. Something specific. His thumb found the scar ridge on his palm without him noticing, pressing hard enough to whiten the skin.
She moved to the kitchen, filled the kettle, set it on the stove. The motion gave her hands something to do while her mind went where it had been trying to go since the moment she’d woken up.
What I’ve done, he’d said. And then the silence.
She’d been filing that detail for weeks, somewhere between his careful evasions and the way he locked up whenever she said the word September. She’d been telling herself it was the bond making her read too much into things. That proximity compromised her judgment.
But her judgment had never been wrong about a subject. Not once. And it wasn’t wrong now.
She poured the water. Let the steam rise.
There was something in this cabin she hadn’t found yet. Something that would tell her what he hadn’t been able to say. She’d been avoiding the search because she’d been afraid of what she’d find. That was the honest part, the part she hadn’t let herself write down.
She was afraid the evidence would destroy what they’d built.
The bedroom door opened. Declan stood in the doorway in his jeans, hair mussed from sleep, his eyes immediately finding her across the room.
Surprise first. Then relief. Then something complicated.
“You’re up.”
“Couldn’t sleep.” She handed him a mug. “I made tea.”
He took it, his fingers brushing hers, and she felt the bond register his awareness. The edges of her restlessness carried through the connection, formless but unmistakable.
“Want to tell me what’s wrong?”
“Not yet.” She kept her voice even. “Come sit with me.”
He sat beside her on the couch. Close but not touching. The domestic quiet of it was strange given the night they’d shared.
“Regrets?” He looked at the fire.
“No.” The answer came without hesitation. “You?”
“Not about this.” His thumb traced the rim of his mug. “Never about this.”
“But about something.”
His face flickered. “There are things I still need to tell you. Things that—” He stopped. “I want to do this right. I want you to know everything before we go any further.”
Something sharpened through the bond, pointed enough to press the air from her lungs. His hand curled into a fist at his side.
“Then tell me.” Her grip tightened on the mug.
“I will.” He bent toward her, elbows on his knees.
“But not like this. Not when I still need to find the words. Not when you’re still—” He stopped himself.
Something in his face changed, went tight.
“I went to Jace yesterday morning. Asked him to be there with me when I tell you. He said by tonight. I just need you to give me until tonight.”
Not deflection. Countdown.
“Okay.” She reached for his hand. “Tonight.”
His shoulders dropped on a slow exhale. He reached over and covered her hand where it rested on her knee. She let him.
“Tell me something else, then.” She shifted beside him. “Tell me about the rogue who survived. The one you brought back.”
He blinked. Shifted. “How did you know about that?”
“Your reports.” Her eyes held his. “I’ve been reading what you leave in your field logs. Not the official ones. The ones you write for yourself.”
His expression shut, caught out. “Those aren’t meant for reading.”
“I know.” She didn’t flinch. “But I read them. And I don’t think you’re the wolf I thought you were.”
He didn’t speak. Then he leaned back.
“His name was Daris. Twenty-six. He’d been out there for eight months before I found him. Half-gone but not all the way.” A pause. “I kept him in holding for three weeks. Talked to him every day.”
“And it worked.”
“Most of the time it doesn’t.” He paused a beat. “Most of the time by that stage they’re too far gone. You have to put them down because it’s the only mercy left.”
He didn’t offer self-pity with any of it. Just facts, delivered in order.
“How do you carry that?”
“Same way you do.” He looked at her. “You just keep getting up.”
Something low and steady settled, nothing like the urgent pull of recent weeks. More like a current finding its level.
The cabin door opened.
Declan was on his feet before Sage registered the sound. Theo stood on the threshold in field gear, snow on his shoulders, silver-threaded dark hair damp from the cold.
“Border breach. Western marker. They left something for you.” He nodded toward Sage. “For both of you.”
Declan quickly pulled on his jacket. She was already standing.
“Stay behind me.” He moved without waiting for an answer.
“Yes.” She was already moving.
They both knew that wasn’t quite a promise.
What Thornwood had left was a photograph, nailed to the border post.
Sage’s face. Taken recently. Through a telephoto lens. She was standing on Declan’s porch, mug in hand, looking at the tree line.
She stared at it. Her own face staring back at her. The careful framing of a professional lens, the elevation of a shooter’s position.
“They’ve been in range.” Her voice didn’t waver.
“Yes.”
“They could have taken the shot anytime.”
“Yes.”
“But they’re waiting.” She pulled it from the post carefully, evidence-handling instinct taking over. “Because killing me doesn’t get them what they want. It just proves they were here.”
Theo’s voice came from behind them. “They want you gone. Willingly. Or they want us to send you out alone.”
“And if we do neither?”
“Then they escalate. And we let them. Because Jace filed a Council incident report on the border shooting this morning. Any further Thornwood action now goes on their record.”
Sage turned the photo over. On the back, in clean block print: YOUR INVESTIGATION IS OVER. GO HOME.
They looked at each other.
“Not a chance.” She folded it and put it in her pocket.
Back at the cabin, Declan drafted his counter-report for Jace while Sage sat at the table with it in front of her, cataloguing it with the clinical attention of evidence work.
She kept coming back to the same point. He was going to tell her tonight. Not weighing it anymore. Not waiting for the right moment. The right moment had run out on him somewhere around the time she’d kissed him. Tonight. Whatever it cost.
She needed to know first.
Not because she didn’t trust him. Because she was an investigator, and investigators didn’t wait for someone else to frame the discovery. She needed to see it in the raw, with no one managing her reaction.
Declan needed to check the perimeter before his meeting with Jace. He’d be out for two hours at minimum.
She could wait. Or she could know.
She already knew which choice she was going to make.
When Declan stood to put on his coat, her eyes lifted.
“There’s something you’re not telling me.”
He went still.
“I know there is.” No accusation. Just statement. “I can feel it every time you look at me. I’ve been able to feel it since the first night.”
He crossed to her, crouched in front of her chair so their eyes were level, his hands framing her face the way they had the first time he’d almost told her.
“When I get back?” His voice had almost nothing left in it. “All of it. I swear it. Whatever you decide after.”
He pressed his forehead to hers for one breath.
Then he stood and walked out the door.
The door closed. She sat with her fists on the table.
Then she stood and moved to the bedroom.